The Preservation of Holy Wells

THE PRESERVATION OF HOLY WELLS.

IT is a very common notion amongst the peasantry, that a retribution overtakes those who wilfully destroy monuments such as stone circles, crosses, wells, and the like. Mr Blight writes me--"Whilst at Boscaswell, in St Just, a few weeks since, an old man told me that a person who altered an old Holy Well there, was drowned the next day in sight of his home, and that a person who carried away the stones of an ancient chapel, had his house burned down that very night." We hope the certainty of punishment will prevent any further spoliation. Cannot we do something towards the preservation of our antiquities ? I quote from a local paper the following -

"If the attention of the members of the Penzance Antiquarian Society were directed to the state of the 'Holy Well' at Laneast, and the remains of the Old Chapel Park, St Clether, they might perhaps induce the proprietors of these 'remnants of antiquity' to bestow a little care on the same, and arrest their further ruin and destruction. Many other 'objects of interest' are in a sad state of neglect, and fast 'fading away.' Slaughtor Bridge, near Camelford, has completely vanished. This is much to be regretted, and is a double loss--first, to those who delight in these 'memorials of the past,' and also to the town and neighbourhood, depriving them of an attraction that has induced many strangers of taste to pay them a visit."