St Margaret's Well, Binsey
believed to be the original "treacle well" from Alice in Wonderland,
the water is supposed to have healing properties
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Taken on Friday June 1, 2007
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Posted on Sunday June 2, 2013
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3 comments
Studley said:
Is best done after dark;
For it can make the follicles rot
And your skin will turn to bark.
Isisbridge replied to Studley:
And my skin is coarse and hairy.
Meet me when the moon is bad
And you'd best be very wary.
Isisbridge said:
www.britainexpress.com/counties/oxfordshire/churches/binsey.htm
Binsey is a small hamlet on the west bank of the River Thames, immediately east of Oxford. Down a quiet rural lane north of the village centre stands the 12th-century church of St Margaret, built on the site of a Saxon church linked to St Frideswide, the patron saint of Oxford, who established an oratory here in the early 8th century.
St Frideswide
Frideswide was the daughter of a Christian nobleman and is thought to have been born around AD 680. A Mercian prince named Algar wanted to marry Frideswide, but she rejected his advances and fled. She hid for three years at Binsey, where she worked as a swineherd while Algar searched for her in vain.
When Algar was blinded by lightning, Frideswide prayed to St Margaret of Antioch to come to his aid. A holy well appeared, just outside the west end of the present church, and Frideswide used the well water to cure Algar's blindness. Another version of the tale, however, says that Algar fell from his horse and was killed and that the well appeared after the nuns of Binsey complained of having to carry water all the way from the River Thames.
Alice in Wonderland
What, you might wonder, is the connection between a medieval holy well and Lewis Carroll's imaginative tale, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland? Carroll, who was a lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church College, based many of the stories on local people and places.
He seems to have used St Margaret's Well as the inspiration for the 'treacle well' that appears in a story related by the Dormouse during the Mad Hatter's tea party. According to the Dormouse, three sisters lived at the bottom of a treacle well.
There is an element of truth in the story; during the medieval period, the word treacle had a very different meaning than it does today. Our word treacle came from the ancient Greek term 'theriac' and could mean a healing liquid or panacea. During the Middle Ages, pilgrims flocked to St Margaret's Well, drawn there because the well waters were said to have healing properties. It was, therefore, a treacle well; healing well.
Even today, regular services are held at the well, carrying on the medieval tradition.