Saint
St Keyne's Well
First to drink is master of the house.
See it clearly
- What's there
- Small stone well-house in a lane
- Legend from
- Tonkin, 18th century
- Tone
- Light-hearted
Newly married? Whoever drinks from this well first will be the boss for life.
St Keyne's Well is a small holy well in a lane about a kilometre south-east of St Keyne village, under a stone housing first built in the 16th century and rebuilt in the 1930s. Legend says St Keyne gave the water a strange power: whichever of a newly married couple drinks from it first will rule the household for life. Robert Hunt says that on his one visit he met a wife drinking from her thimble and arguing with her husband, who claimed he had won by dipping his fingers in first and sucking them. The poet Robert Southey later wrote a ballad, The Well of St Keyne, about it.