St Anne''s Holy Well

In response to freespiral’s request that we try to find as many holy wells as we can in February here is St. Anne’s Holy Well, Bristol.  It is in a steep sided rocky and wooded valley in a loop of the river Avon as it leaves Bristol for Bath. There is an ancient path that leads down to it and onwards to the St Anne’s cross river ferry.  A miserable entrance to the wood revealed old tyres, bags of rubbish and shopping trolleys but further on it was much more beautiful with a stream running through it from a tunnel through the hill at the far end and masses of wild garlic leaves poking through the banks.  The well was full of stones and had at one time been covered by a metal lid.  There was a good fence but as the gate was open people could get in and many ribbons hung from the trees and some lovely wooden boats were tied to the railings. Alongside was a notice saying that mediaeval coins and tokens were discovered in the well a century ago.
 
St Anne was the patron saint of sailors, harbours and ports and she is reputed to have been the mother of the Virgin Mary.  Her feast day is July 27th. In 1485 Henry V11 visited St Anne’s chapel which was close by and had been built a hundred years before. Henry had been under the financial and physical protection of the French throne or its vassals for most of his life, prior to his ascending the throne of England. To strengthen his position, however, he subsidised shipbuilding and strengthened the navy and he  commissioned Europe's first ever – and the world's oldest surviving - dry dock in Southampton in the same year as visiting St. Anne's chapel and well.  He really improved England's trading  opportunities. His queen came in 1502. (How they travelled around so freely in those days .is amazing.)  The mother abbey at Keynsham was destroyed in Henry V111’s dissolution of the monasteries and the chapel fell into ruins in which a pottery factory had been built by the late 1600s although there is no sign of that now.  A couple of extras
P.S.  Just found out"The water of this well was formerly considered good for affectations of the eye”.