I've been doing a lot of internal reflection of my family history lately, stories and memories of stories that have been passed down to me through my maternal family have been surfacing.
Close enough by walking distance from my grandmother's house there was a small spring, the road she lived on was named after it, redwell, the holy red well, a sacred spring dating back to the 11th century.
I was maybe 8 at the time, and my head was full of princesses and knights of legend, I daydreamed up a whole high fantasy storyline for the well.
Thanks for reminding me of this memory.
Fascinating!!! Is is near Matson?
https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=24546
I love the little comment that says "lock your car" when you go visit the spring. It's the bronx!!!
I got to be honest, I still felt like a princess when walking that green stair. Galadriel, or Arwen. 🤣
It's fun until you fall in the well. It looks like covered and protected though.
Haha yep Matson was the place. It's rough now, but back then, whilst it was a council estate the people who lived there all had old fashioned community values. My nan would often pop over the road to see her friends and chat over the garden gates. They'd often exchange fruit pies, cakes and teas and one woman even painted stones and garden objects in riverboatesque design for the neighbours gardens.
My grandad took pride in his garden, he actually won a few community garden awards because of his well kept blue hydrangeas.
It all started to change I think, when they turned 'The Hill' I don't know it's official name, into a golf course. This must have been sometime in the mid nineties. Before that it was scrub and grazing land for farm animals, and when we visited we would always go for a walk up the hill to gather blackberries for nanny to make pies with. Quite often the sheep grazing on the hill would escape out of the access despite the rolling bars on the ground designed to keep them in and flood the into their road. That was all terrible fun for my cousins and I.
There's also a very interesting church in Matson. Supposedly a ghost walks between the church buildings at midnight, the Blue lady, looking for her silk slipper (which is actually in a museum in Gloucester city... I've seen it! It was discovered when they were doing works on the church).
Wow this is some cool details, how am I gonna top that up?
So they built a golf course and it went from "The Shire" to shite?
I imagine gangster golfers, coming out of their golf-cars, violently pushing down grannies all the way down the hill.
Gangfers!