His swath of brown-black hair is composed of lichen, the pallid complexion made from scales of neatly overlapping hydrangea petals. His nose – more pugilist than regal beak – and cheeks are pepped up by petals dipped in red paint. This must be one of the more unusual mugshots to mark the coronation of Charles III. In fact, it’s the centrepiece of the 179th well-dressing ceremony to be held in the village of Endon, Staffordshire.
Well-dressing, which is also known as well-flowering, is an English tradition practised mainly in Derbyshire and Staffordshire in which springs, wells and other water sources – sometimes including village taps – are decorated with intricate floral designs. Dressing takes a similar form in most villages: large wooden boards that have been soaked in a local river or pond to prevent movement are packed with soft clay. The images are outlined in alder cones or coffee beans, and then flowers, petals, berries, seeds, moss, lichen, stone and shells – and these days a few less-than-natural elements – are painstakingly pressed into the clay. Endon’s most prominent example, shaped rather like a Gothic window, is mounted over the large well in the centre of the village, and it frames the spout where water gushes out of the mouth of Poseidon. Beneath the newly anointed King Charles, a unicorn made from camomile flowers prances beside Buckingham Palace, while a rearing lion made of statis blooms guards Denstone College, a local school.
The ritual of decorating wells and water sources with greenery and flowers is likely to have ancient origins, but latterly (in common with other events in the Christian calendar such as Halloween, Christmas and Easter), the church muscled in and aligned it with the liturgy. The village most renowned for the rite is Tissington in Derbyshire. The origins of its tradition are obscure, perhaps deriving from early rituals offering thanks to gods for a good water source. Another theory links the ceremony to villagers celebrating the purity of their water supply after the Black Death swept across England in 1348 but spared Tissington. Or it might be connected to festivities after a prolonged drought in 1615. The earliest record for these wells being adorned with garlands occurs in 1758, and the modern practice of using clay boards as the ground for elaborate artworks is first recorded in 1818.
Whatever its origins, well-dressing in Tissington takes place on Ascension Day and is still closely linked to Victorian ecclesiastical tradition. Its six wells are each decorated by different family groups from the tiny village. The designs are kept secret until they’re unveiled on the day of the blessing. Hands Well is conceived and adorned by three generations of the same family. So too is the Children’s Well, which in 2023 depicted Palm Sunday, Jesus riding a lop-eared donkey fashioned from what look like hazel catkins or pussy willow. Hands Well features Jacob’s Dream at Bethel, a scene from Genesis in which the Hebrew patriarch sees a stairway rising from earth to heaven. But it is given a 21st-century twist with a border of Disney characters, including Mickey Mouse, Snow White and Bambi. Still more idiosyncratic is Coffin Well, a casket-shaped water source set in a tiny back garden and framed by an arched dressing titled End of the Line. This commemorates the closure in 1963 of the Ashbourne to Buxton line (then the highest public railway in Britain). Given the doomsday humour, the model of a steam engine tooting smoke looks rather cheerful. ‘It’s wonderful that this desire to continue the practice still exists, but the imagery has changed – it’s no longer only Christian stories,’ says Simon Costin (WoI March 2010), director of the Museum of British Folklore. ‘I love the way they reference popular culture – there was a Winnie the Pooh and the Muppets, and many moons ago one featured Teletubbies.’
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In Endon, the well-dressing blessing coincides with the crowning of the May queen. That’s unusual. On the punishingly hot Saturday at the end of spring when photographer Henry Bourne and I visited the village, a few miles northeast of Stoke-on-Trent, proceedings began with a service in the parish church of St Luke’s. Then the new queen and her retinue – the king and pages take a distant second place –together with a clutch of clergy processed through the village, stopping to bless the Large Well. ‘The May queens crowned today are a 19th-century overlay on much earlier practices,’ continues Costin, ‘an attempt to sanitise what were quite bawdy, licentious, celebratory events. The Victorians were trying to suppress the drunken, anarchic side of May Day.’
Well-dressing is probably a formalisation of the folk custom of dropping pins or coins into the water and tying rags to nearby trees. According to the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, healing or holy wells are rarer in England than Scotland or Ireland, but even so some 200 still exist. They’re often regarded as wishing wells today, though such are just the latest phase in a long tradition of ritual activity that can be traced, thanks to archaeology, back through Roman and Celtic culture to prehistoric times. All these customs connect with a larger treasury of mythologies that celebrate and protect water sources, investing them with healing, and sometimes magical and prophetic, powers.
As Veronica Strang writes in Water: Nature and Culture: ‘Though other “mainstream” religions now dominate, there was a time when almost all societies worshipped water beings of one kind or another, and many such ideas remain, describing the generative and sometimes punitive powers of water.’ If the worship of water was as much about protection as spiritual connection, the parlous state of our rivers and waterways is a good enough reason for its revival.
A version of this article also appears in the July 2024 issue of The World of Interiors. Learn about our subscription offers
