Saint
The healing Lady Well
Good for the eyes. Watch who you see.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Fenced spring by a church path
- Legend from
- Local tradition
- Tone
- Eerie
A holy well for sore eyes, and an old woman in a blue mac who isn't there.
Below Speen village, by a little path down to the parish church, stands the Lady Well. Royal Berkshire History calls it the best of Berkshire's surviving medieval holy wells. It is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, perhaps replacing an older Iron Age mother goddess. Local tradition says its water cures eye disease and other ills. Wikipedia adds that it was fenced off in Victorian times and is said to be haunted: villagers report an old white-haired woman in a blue rain mac walking in the graveyard and up the well path.