Treacle well rediscovered

I have a little booklet, printed 1970, called Looking Around Newport (Pembs.) by Dr Islwyn Jenkins, headmaster of the primary school at the time. It details a series of local walks, explains the history, geography and geology of the area and includes poems and stories by the children. This redoubtable teacher got his pupils out and about during the summer months tracing and tracking old byways, clearing paths and mapping routes, discovering, thinking and writing about their immediate surroundings. Without a national curriculum to hamstring his efforts he devised a wonderfully complete and integrated programme of learning, the fruits of which went into this forgotten pamphlet.

One of the places described is a well, by Nant-y-Blodau (Flowery Brook) which runs deep  down by one of  the lanes leading up the mountain.
 "By the brookside in springtime violets, primroses and bluebells abound... on your right below  you will see Ffynnon Drieg (Treacle Well). In the old days the water in this well was considered to have medicinal properties: its water was like balm (using the old meaning of treacle.)"
A local poetaster declared he had enjoyed 
Many a delicious draught
From the renowned and nectared spring.

During May 1970 six of the senior boys from the school had  a thrilling time, writes Mr Jenkins,  digging out and restoring this old well that never dries up. (It's not hard to imagine how wet and muddy they must have got.) However despite the quite specific location given I was never able to discover the well. Looking down into the gulley in which the brook runs all I could see were brambles and vegetation with the sound of water gurgling beneath. But today was different: the stream bed has been cleared and there below, beside the brook, I could see a little basin cupping a reservoir of clear water that seemed to be oozing from the bank above.  There was a small containing wall in front where you could kneel and sip the nectar. (I must admit I didn't, being unsure whether there might be contamination from  animals higher up.)


I was thrilled to find the well at last, especially as I'm familiar with the only other treacle well in existence at Binsey near Oxford  which was  made famous by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland. The name treacle well sounds like a piece of nonsense but Mr Jenkins is right, treacle originally meant a healing unguent, specifically against the bite of venomous animals, from the Greek and Latin words for antidote (more about the etymology here.)

Although this is a medicinal well I am taking the liberty of tagging it for the International Holy Well Month 2017 for Freespiral's collection because surely any perceived curative properties would have been attributed to the appropriate god, or more likely, goddess, through whose bounty the water was thought to flow.

Extra gives a wider view of the well's location. I think it will disappear from view again with the spring plant growth.