HISTORY OF WELL
The name was derived in Saxon times from the strong spring which wells out from the chalk and feeds the lakes on either side the house. The names Burwell and Belleau in the immediate neighbourhood are of similar origin, though the latter is a Norman name. At the time of the Conquest Well and Belleau were both bestowed on Gilbert de Gaunt, the Conqueror’s nephew, and were let by him to one Ragener, whose family took the addition “de Welle” and lived here for four centuries. In the thirteenth century we hear of a church at Well, and William de Welle (the third of the name) in 1283 obtained a licence for a market and fair at Alford. His son Adam was summoned to Parliament as a baron in 1299. In the fifteenth century the name was changed from Welle to Welles, and Leo Lord Welles fell at Towton in 1461. The title was now combined with that of Willoughby d’Eresby, and Leo’s son, Richard, who took it jure uxoris, he having married the Willoughby heiress, was the Lord Welles who was so basely put to death in 1470 by Edward IV. for complicity in the Lincolnshire rebellion, together with his son-in-law, T. Dymoke, and his son Robert. See Chap. [XXXIII.]
Leo, who fell at Towton, had married for his second wife, Margaret Duchess of Somerset, and her son John joined Henry VII., and after the battle of Bosworth the king restored to him the Welles estate which had been forfeited after Robert’s execution, made him a viscount, and gave him the hand of Cicely, daughter of Edward IV. and sister to his own queen, in marriage. It is interesting to read in Mr. Tatham’s paper that “This lady carried the heir-apparent, Prince Arthur, at his baptism at Winchester in 1486.” She subsequently married one of the Kyme family of Kyme Tower near Boston. John Viscount Welles died in 1499, and the male line of the Welles became extinct, but the Willoughby line went on, for Cicely, the sister of the unfortunate Richard Welles, had married Sir R. Willoughby, and her grandson William succeeded to that title as the ninth Lord Willoughby. He was the father of Catharine Duchess of Suffolk and subsequently wife of Richard Bertie, whose monument occupies so large a space in the Willoughby chapel at Spilsby. The Welles estate remained with the Willoughbys (who in 1626 were created Earls of Lindsey) till 1650, when the extortionate fines levied on Royalist families by the Parliament made it necessary for Belleau and Welle to be sold. Belleau went to Sir H. Vane, and Well to W. Wolley, who sold it about 1700 to Anthony Weltden, a man who had a romantic career in the early days of the Hon. East India Company. From him Well passed to James Bateman, one of whose sons became Lord Bateman. Another, James, succeeded to the estate and built the present house about 1725, a wing of which was pulled down about 1845. This James married Anne, daughter of Sir Robert Chaplin of Tathwell, who also came to live and die at Well. Bateman’s daughter and heiress married a Dashwood in 1744—probably it was he who planted the Vale (he died in 1825)—and in 1838 the estate was purchased by Mr. Christopher Nisbet Hamilton, whose daughter, Mrs. Hamilton Ogilvy, has just sold it to Mr. Walter H. Rawnsley.
WELL VALE
The following lines were written on the gate at the top of Well Vale by a traveller taking his yearly tramp from Horncastle for a dip in the sea at Mablethorpe, a good twenty miles.
Some say “All’s well that ends well,”
But here Well begins well.
They say too “Truth is in a well,”
But here there is in truth a Well.
Welcome then Well! since I well come along to her,