There hermitts may you dwell.
“Is’t true the springe in rock hereby
Doth tidewise ebb and flowe?
Or have we fooles with lyars met?
Fame says its, be it soe.”
The last tradition of this hermitage chapel is, that when it was kept in repair, a person diseased with a grievous leprosy, was either placed or fixed himself therein, where he lived until the time of his death, to avoid infecting others. He was daily attended with meat, drink, and washing by his daughter, named Gunnett or Gundred, and the well hereby from whence she fetched water for his use is to this day shewn, and called by the name of St Gunnett’s Well, or St Gundred’s Well.
It is not possible to give even the names of the wells which are still thought to have “some healing virtue” in them. The typical wells have alone been mentioned, and to these brief notices of a few others may be added.
ST CUTHBERT’S OR CUBERT’S WELL.
Hal thus describes this famous place:—“In this parish is that famous and well-known spring of water, called Holy-well, (so named, the inhabitants say, for that the virtues of this water was first discovered on All-Hallows day.) The same stands in a dark cavern of the seacliff rocks, beneath full seamark on spring-tides, from the top of which cavern falls down or distills continually drops of water from the white, blue, red, and green veins of those rocks. And accordingly, in the place where those drops of water fall, it swells to a lump of considerable bigness, and there petrifies to the hardness of ice, glass, or freestone, of the several colours aforesaid, according to the nature of those veins in the rock from whence it proceeds, and is of a hard, brittle nature, apt to break like glass.
“The virtues of this water are very great. It is incredible what numbers in summer-season frequent this place and waters from counties far distant.”[22]