St Blaise's well

Monument

What is recorded here

Little fountain in circular brickwork pond marking the site of St Blaise's well. Information board illustrating the previous pillared canopy/roof that was lost in a snowstorm in the 1880s.

Read the whole record

Little fountain in circular brickwork pond marking the site of St Blaise's well. Information board illustrating the previous pillared canopy/roof that was lost in a snowstorm in the 1880s.

St Blaise's Well is an iron-rich spring in the former grounds of the bishops of Rochester at Bromley. Medieval pilgrims visited its chapel and sought healing water; after the Reformation the place vanished from use, was rediscovered in 1754 and later rebuilt beside the old palace moat.

Why it was made

The well developed around a spring on land granted to Bishop Eardwulf around AD 750. An oratory honoured Saint Blaise, patron of the wool trade important to west Kent, while pilgrims came for prayer and the water's reputed healing power.

People and events

Bishops, pilgrims and local clergy kept the place in use; papal remission encouraged visits at Pentecost. Chaplain Mr Harwood rediscovered the buried spring in 1754, and surgeon Thomas Reynolds tested and promoted its mineral water two years later.

How it worked

Water containing iron left a yellow deposit and fed a constructed well away from the spring. People drank it as medicine, but those healing claims belong to historic belief and experiment rather than proof by modern medicine.

What remains

The chapel fell into ruin after the Reformation and the well was buried, restored, neglected and damaged again. The reconstructed well now stands in an artificial rock garden and drains into a lake formed from part of the bishops' moat.

Why it mattered

St Blaise's Well preserves the changing life of a sacred spring: medieval pilgrimage, early mineral-water tourism, disappearance and civic restoration. Its record shows how belief, trade identity and landscape combined at one local water source.