St Laurence's Well, Slamannan

Dedication: Saint Laurence

Location: Slamannan

Coordinates: 55.93814N, -3.83052W

Grid reference: NS857731

Status: destroyed

Although it is not exactly clear why, Slamannan seems to have always had a connection with St Laurence, a Spanish saint who was martyred in the 3rd century on a gridiron. Prior to the Reformation, the parish was actually called "St Laurence"; even as late as 1854, legal documents relating to the area always mentioned it as "the parish of Slamannan, otherwise St Laurence". The local church, which, unsurprisingly, is dedicated to Laurence, seems to be responsible for this, and for the dedication of St Laurence's Well, which was presumably used for baptisms.

Relatively little is known regarding the history of St Laurence's Well, and the same can be said for the neighbouring "High St Laurence Well" (the two were almost certainly linked in some way). The earliest mention of the site that I have found dates from 1745, and can be found in The Statistical Account of Scotland, under the description of Slamannan parish, which states that "there is an excellent ſpring of water a little to the ſouth-eaſt of the church, which ſtill goes by the name of Laurence Well". This statement was repeated exactly and not expanded upon in volume 4 of The Imperial Gazetteer of Scotland in 1854.

Not unusually, I have uncovered no record of any traditions or ceremonies that were particularly associated with the site (this of course does not indicate an absence of traditions, only an absence of records), and there does not appear to be anything more known about its history.

When the site was visited in 1953 by the Royal Commission, they found that it had been "covered with a concrete and iron manhole", and that it had been incorporated into "a sewerage system". When the site was visited by OS surveyors, however, in 1957, the "sewerage housing" that had previously covered the well had collapsed, but no "vestiges of a well" were visible. Today, St Laurence's Well has well and truly been eradicated.

Images:

Old OS maps are reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland