“I evaporated in a brass furnace 13½ gallons to 3 quarts, then let it stand 3 days to settle, and poured the clear water from the fœces. This was a light smooth insipid earth of a yellow colour, fat between the fingers, insipid and impalpable, which being dried, weighed 93 grains. The remaining 3 quarts I evaporated in a brass kettle and had from it 53 grains of a very salt glutinous substance which dried into a solid mass of a brown colour. When the water came to a pint or thereabout, it began to smell like glew, and continued to do so when in a solid substance; it was then also as high-coloured as lye; but I am afraid this colour might arise from the brass kettle, in some measure, or too great a fire, being perhaps burnt.”
Another of his scientific records runs:—
“Oct. 9th.—I put into a Florence flask as much of this water as filled it up to the neck within 5 inches of the top. This I placed in a sand heat and increased the fire gradually till it boiled; and so I evaporated ad siccitatem. Some volatile sal stuck to the glass even up to the top; at the bottom was a small quantity of dark coloured matter, like that above, but I could not get together 2 grains of either. Here it is plain this sal is so volatile as to be raised and fly away by heat.”
In another place he writes:—
“On the 5th of November, 1737, I filled several glasses with this water, and put into them the following simples:—
1. Green Tea. This, in about 24 hours, made it of the colour of sack, and, by standing, it became much deeper coloured, like strong old beer.
2. Fustic; not so deep, more like cyder.
3. Red Sanders; almost the same colour in the light; but if I held the glass in the shade, it appeared of a blueish green, exactly like some old glass bottles I have formerly seen.
4. Alkanet; deeper, like old mountain wine.
5. Galls; paler than any of the foregoing. A large blue scum on the top, such as we see upon urine in fevers, and standing lakes of water, where there are minerals. With logwood, tormentil, cort, granat, etc., there are some spots of this kind, but with none so much as with galls.
“A little below the Spaw (continues our authority), on the other side of the brook, they meet with a white clay, full of yellow veins of a deep colour, like gumboge when it has been for some time exposed to the air. These two they temper together and make into cakes, which they sell to the glovers by the name of ochre cakes, and with them they give a yellow colour to leather.
“Near the surface of the earth the country is for the most part a strong clay, which makes good brick, but, for a small compass from this Spaw all along the village on the north side of the brook we have sand. Underground the whole country abounds with coal and ironstone.”
The glovers’ handicraft, it may be mentioned in passing, was once strongly represented in olden Darlaston.
The situation of Willenhall is by no means an elevated one, and the whole plain in which it is situated formerly abounded in Springs, ere the surface had been so much disturbed by mining operations.
On the edge of the valley, under the shadow of Sedgley Beacon, was the famous Spring known as the Lady Wulfruna’s, and which gave the place its name, Spring Vale; from this spot the silvery stream flowed eastwards into Willenhall, seeking the cool shade of the pleasant woodland there.
The stream, as it came in from Bilston, and ran eastwards through Willenhall, till it met the Tame, was once called the Hind Brook, or Stag River. In Saxon times the Tame here seems to have been designated Beorgita’s Stream; and Mr. G. T. Lawley, in his “History of Bilston,” says that the original bed of this brook was discovered in Willenhall some years ago when extensive excavations were being made.
So far the scientific aspect of this once famous Well. The popular view of a much frequented mineral spring which had “long been celebrated for disease of the eye and skin” opens out an even wider aspect. As previously mentioned, the brook flowing past it ran from west to east; a stream so directed was always accounted by the Druids of old as a sacred watercourse. Being thus from the earliest dawn of history within sacred precincts, there can be little doubt the Willenhall fountain enjoyed the reputation of a “Holy well” for many centuries. As such it came in for the annual custom of “well dressing,” a vestige of the old pagan practice of well worship. Respecting this ancient custom, Dr. Plot, writing in 1686 in his “Natural History of Staffordshire,” says:—