11/08/2025
This is really fascinating for those interested in the Chalice Well
Chalice Well, a photograph taken from below the famous round hatch.
This well structure below the famous hatch is believed to have been built with stone taken from Glastonbury Abbey after the terrible fire of 1184.
Archaeologists suggest that this well shaft may have originally been a free-standing structure, 8 foot high above the spring; but the surrounding land has silted up so much since then that it is now buried entirely below ground. What we now see as the ground level today is a hole in the roof of the original structure.
Also found 12 foot under current ground level in the Chalice Well gardens was the preserved stump of a Yew tree, dated to Roman times, which is the likely ancestor of Yews currently growing on site.
Digs also found evidence of Mesolithic, Iron Age and Roman use of this spring. The Iron Age pottery shard found here is the first found in the actual town of Glastonbury, others having been found at the Lake Villages and Ponter’s Ball earthwork at Havyatt.
Historians posit that the earliest reference to the Chalice Well is from William of Malmensbury’s History of Glastonbury Abbey, when a hermit explains to Arthur’s nephew about “the mystery of a particular fountain, the water from which continually changed its taste and colour”. This may refer to the fact that before the reservoir was built in Wellhouse Lane, dividing the white spring from the red, both would have flowed together in the lane, meaning that when winter rains increased the concentration of white spring water in the Chalice Well, so the iron hydroxide levels would be reduced, leading to changes of taste and colour. But today the springs no longer mingle in the same way, leaving Chalice Well as we know it with a more regular flavour and appearance.
The name ‘Chalice Well’ derives from the Medieval ‘Chalcwelle’. The first recorded use of ‘Chalice’ as a name is from the ownership of Alice Buckton after 1912.
In modern history, the Chalice Well had no known reputation as a healing well, until Matthew Chancellor’s dream of 1751, when by drinking Chalice water from the Chaingate spout, his chronic asthma was cured, and Glastonbury briefly gained a reputation as a spa town.
After the spa flopped - largely from lack of genteel accommodation - the well was generally unloved. Purchased by a Catholic seminary in 1886, the well was not apparently treasured.
But in 1912, the site was bought by Alice Buckton. Her drama and craft school ran here with great success, and in 1919 Frederick Bligh Bond (the Glastonbury Abbey archaeologist who controversially used automatic writing seances to gather information about Abbey history) presented Alice Buckton with the distinctive pierced Vesica Piscis well cover that still adorns the wellhead today.
For a while the site became a boys’ school, until in 1959 the site was purchased by a Trust set up by Wellesley Tudor Pole, creator of ‘the silent minute’ in WW2. In 1970 the school finally closed, and the Chalice Well gardens - as we know and love them today - began.
Surprisingly, chemical analysis of the Chalice Well water shows it to have a relatively low iron hydroxide level of 1mg/L. By comparison, the chalybeate well at Tunbridge Wells has an iron concentration of 27mg/L.
Modern hydrologists believe that the Chalice Well and the White Spring both flow from the same aquifer. However, due to fault lines and impermeable rocks below ground, the Chalice Well issues more mature water that has been stored longer in the aquifer, with ensuing stronger water-rock interactions, which explains the distinct taste and chemical composition.
However, some dowsers believe the Chalice Well issues from a source in the Mendips, while the Chalice Well Trust claim the water to be ‘primary’, never having seen the light of day before. Who can say for sure?
May the waters of Chalice Well ever continue to flow!
