St Mindred's Well, Exning

Dedication: Saint Etheldreda

Location: Exning

Coordinates: 52.25489N, 0.37298W

Grid reference: TL620645

Heritage designation: none

According to tradition, the far-famed St Etheldreda was born at Exning, then the capital of East Anglia, in or around the year 630, to King Anna of the East Angles and his wife (the sister of St Hilda of Whitby), Hereswitha. She reputedly lived in Exning with her two sisters, St Ethelburga and St Sexburga, until she was forced by her father to marry, despite the fact that she had her sights set solely on becoming a nun. It is said that Etheldreda had already taken a vow of perpetual virginity; fortunately for her, this was respected by both of her successive husbands. After the death of her first husband, Tondbert, she was wed to Egfrid, King of Northumbria, and subsequently became Queen of Northumbria for a brief period of time. Her most famous endeavour, however, is the creation of Ely Abbey, which she founded in the 670s; unsurprisingly, it was at Ely that her relics were kept, along with those of several of her sisters, until the Reformation.

Of course, the cult of Etheldreda in Exning was more focused on her birth and early childhood than on her later merits. In fact, Etheldreda's cult was strong in the surrounding area, and several holy wells were dedicated to her nearby at Grantchester, Aldreth, and, of course, Ely; it is quite likely that pilgrims would have paid a visit to Exning and its holy well on their way to the saint's shrine at Ely. Locally, it is said that she was baptised in Exning's holy well by Paulinus, then Archbishop of York, as a young child. Indeed, although her sisters are also reputed to have grown up in Exning, Etheldreda's cult was clearly the strongest in the village, and it is probable that the original church of Exning would have been dedicated to her, the holy well being the only surviving remnant of her local cult.

Intriguingly, the patronage of the parish church seems to have changed in, or shortly after, 1089, when the building was gifted to Battle Abbey by William Rufus. Battle Abbey, founded by William the Conqueror following his success at the Battle of Hastings, was dedicated to St Martin of Tours, a 4th century figure who is associated with some parts of France, and who is an obvious example of one of the many non-British saints whose cults the Normans brought to England in 1066. In many parts of the country, local dedications are known to have been replaced by more familiar ones (for example, the church of Letterston in Pembrokeshire, originally dedicated to St Silin, was re-dedicated to St Giles by the Hospitallers), and this undoubtedly happened here, because Exning's parish church has borne the patronage of St Martin of Tours since the latter half of the 11th century. Nonetheless, this re-dedication evidently did not completely eliminate St Etheldreda's local cult (assuming that the church was dedicated to her before 1089), because traditions regarding her connection to the area continued to circulate.

Nothing is recorded of Exning's holy well during the medieval period, although it has almost certainly been in existence since the development of Etheldreda's cult in the village. After the Reformation, of course, this saint's cult was suppressed, and it is probably due to this that the holy well became known as "St Mindred's" or "St Mildrede's" Well. There is only one saint with anything resembling this name: St Mildthryth, also called "Mildred", daughter of Prince Merewald of Mercia. Although Mildthryth was a relative of Etheldreda, there is no evidence that she ever visited the area, or that her cult spread here; in fact, King Penda of Mercia and King Anna were, during the 7th century, almost constantly at war, so it is improbable that Mildthryth, being a member of the Mercian royal family, would ever have ventured into enemy territory. Importantly, Exning was something of a defensive base (according to the 1892 Tourist's Guide to the County of Cambridge, it was "a strategic point" of defence) for Anna against the Mercians, so Mildthryth is exceptionally unlikely to have even managed to enter what was then the kingdom's capital. Instead, it is much more likely, given that Etheldreda's cult is directly connected to Exning's holy well, that "Mindred" is a corruption of a form of Etheldreda's name.

In 1854, Mrs Matthew Hall, writing in Lives of the Queens of England Before the Conquest, provided an interesting example of a known abbreviation of the saint's name: "Eldrude"; additional recorded variants of the title include "Etheldritha" and "Edilthride". "Eldrude" could feasibly have been corrupted into "Meldrude", and then into "Mildred" or "Mildrede"; similarly, "Edilthride" could easily have mutated into "Medilthrid", and thus become "Mildred". The fact that "Mindred's Well" was even later corrupted into "Minzin Well" stands as proof that such a transformation is easily possible. It is not clear, however, whether this corruption occurred before or after the Reformation (it is possible that "Mindred" is simply a very local form of the name Etheldreda).

In fact, although the well was more commonly known as "St Mindred's" by the 19th century, the name "St Etheldreda's Well" was still used by some, at least according to Illustrations of Monumental Brasses, published in 1842, which reported that the well "still bears her [Etheldreda's] name", which was "remembered by the peasants of the present day".

The holy well was unfailingly marked on Ordnance Survey maps as "St. Mindred's Well" until 1926, when the name was inexplicably changed to "St. Wendred's Well", a title that the spring has retained ever since. It is surely no coincidence that, in 1930, the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology's journal claimed that the inhabitants of Exning were uncertain as to the identity of "St Mindred", and were beginning to question the authenticity of the name. According to the journal, one new theory for the origin of the name "Mindred" was that it "may be a variant for St. Wendreda's Well". The OS surveyors must have been informed, in 1926, that the spring was dedicated to St Wendreda by one of the local proponents of this theory, and the name simply stuck. In fact, a completely modern tradition that has no roots in any medieval legends, and which was presumably created to compensate for this theory, asserts that Wendreda once used the well for healing purposes.

It is interesting to note that there is considerable evidence to suggest that this well may have been sacred to the Romans before it became Christianised. In The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region, published in 1948, Sir Cyril Fox traced the route of a "Romanized" trackway known as "Street Way", a section of which, he claimed, made directly "for the spring-head known as St Mindred's Well"; the trackway did not terminate here, however, although the spring was evidently of importance to the users of the path. In fact, it is possible that this route is even older than Roman times, with Fox noting that it "presents the characters of a pre-Roman way", so it is possible that this holy well has been viewed as sacred for thousands of years.

According to modern OS maps, the holy well still exists to this day, although it is not clear whether any structure survives at the spring.

Access:

The well is located on private land.