Well Dressing

Yesterday I was a good and dutiful daughter and took the oldies out for a day away from the Rest Home.....

Ma and Mol had heard about the Well Dressing at a nearby village, Tissington, and asked if I'd like to take a look with them, so off we went (to Polo's disgust).  It was well worth it.  And amazingly, the weather favoured us and (mostly) the sun shone - although we were a bit windswept, and some of us (ie. them!) got rather chilly.

To start, for those who haven't come across it before, Well Dressing is a Derbyshire tradition, origins dating back possibly into pagan times.  It consists of dressing wells with flower petals, as a form of thanks.  According to that wonderful site Wikipedia it is thought to have originiated in Tissington.  We have 2 choices with that - either it started in thanks for surviving the Black Death of 1348-9, with the immunity of the local inhabitants (all escaped - there aren't many places can say that!) being ascribed to the purity of the water; or it is because they survived a severe drought in 1615, where the wells flowed freely and despite thousands of cattle perishing and crops failing this village had an unending supply of water as the wells flowed freely.

So every Spring, starting on Ascension Day, the 6 wells in Tissington are dressed.  There was a mass on the Sunday (Ascension Day itself) and all wells were dressed in a procession.  As I was working Saturday night we went on Monday.

To dress them, clay is dug locally, mixed with salt and trod (like grapes! - I'm quoting the little leaflet we got here) to the right consistency.  The boards on which the pictures are mounted are soaked in the village pond for some days, then plastered in the clay.  Flowers are picked locally, the picture is traced on, and then the petals are used to fill it in.  Not to mention ferns, moss, gravel and even pussy willow that we spotted here and there.  The pictures are all erected the evening before, and they remain up for about a week.  (The guide says until the following Wednesday - but it had forgotten that Ascension Day has now been moved to the Sunday and quoted it as starting the following Thursday, so I'm guessing they'll be up until next weekend.)

The village itself is part of the Tissington Estate.  This has been in the hands of the Fitzherbert family since the time of Elizabeth I, and today still consists of 10 farms, 40 cottages and miscellaneous lettings.  Not to mention the Hall in the middle of the village, which the family still live in.  It's open sometimes to the public, so a trip is planned for the summer, hopefully when Sarah is up.  As a result the village has stayed small, beautifully kept and is a real jewel.  There are nice tearooms in the old Coach House (we had homemade sweet potato and leek soup, yummy).  A rather good candle workshop - I've bought their stuff before as gifts, they do lovely stuff.  I was most restrained - my rather full paper bag (which broke later, thank goodness I had my camera bag to transfer everything to!) only contained presents.  And a very interesting gift shop.  This rocking bird is now flummoxing the real ones, positioned near my bird bath.  Oh yes, and a lovely butchery.  We all had homity pie for dinner last night - I thought these were traditional Derbyshire sausagemeat pies, but I was muddling them up with something else - they were veggie with lots of cheese.  And very good too.  And I found ham hocks, a real rarity these days, so yellow peas are soaking for soup tonight.  And 3 venison steaks are now in the freezer waiting for Polo's next sleepover; sadly she will be missing out.

And so on to the wells.

The first was Hands Well.

To explain the side panels, this is the 70th anniversary of the Dambusters Raid, by 617 Squadron (badge on the RHS).  Training for the raid was carried out over the Ladybower and Derwent reservoirs, not so very far from here.  (Derwent Water may be in the Lake District, but the River Derwent is the big one running through the middle of Derby - the Trent just runs close - and 3 reservoirs are to be found a bit further upstream, within comfortable reach - I've walked in the hills above them several times.)

And just to prove I didn't go alone.....  An appropriate well for me to position them in front of ;-)

From there we moved on toward the Children's Well (with a stop en route for some other children's local effort).

We couldn't decide if John was drowning or shampooing the victim, but maybe we were being a bit picky.  The clouds are sheep wool.

A little further down the hill was Hall Well.

I particularly like the olive twig.  Surprisingly this turned out to be right outside the Hall.  So photos of the Hall as well.

Oh dear.

Passing the Tearooms (we returned later for lunch) we went on to the Yew Tree Well.  Another one with a puzzling name.  The candle workshop is just behind this one.

Lovely detail. The big thing about this one is that the Ashbourne Town Band played at Twickenham for the Harlequins v Exeter rugby match in March.

Then on round past the village pond where they soak the boards...........

(Duck.... quack..... yum)

.......to the Town Well.  I think was my favourite.  Straight out of the book this one is.  "First he ate some lettuces and some French beans; and then he ate some radishes."

Oh what a naughty Peter.

And finally the Coffin Well.  Personally, I think this owes less to being not that far from the Church than it does to the shape of the stone-lined area in front of it.  It did seem to confuse some of the others viewing it.  But then they looked like Rest Home-on-a-day-out too, so were probably very easily confused.

I can feel an annual outing coming on.  It was a great day out.