Storm Éowyn made it rather wild on Roseberry this morning, so let me take refuge in recent memories and revisit Wednesday’s more gentle jaunt to the Yorkshire Coast instead.
This is the Holy Well in the churchyard at Hinderwell, once the village’s sole water supply. Apparently, the waters were deemed miraculous, curing eye diseases and drawing medieval pilgrims. Of course, no holy spring would be complete without a saintly origin story: St. Hilda, while wandering the parish, reportedly prayed during a drought, and lo, a spring burst forth, dutifully bubbling away to this day. Quite the plumbing miracle.
St. Hilda, Anglo-Saxon England’s leading lady of sanctity, was a disciple of St. Aidan and later Abbess of Whitby Abbey. She made her mark at the Synod of Whitby in 663, where a group of men undoubtedly required her intervention to settle the great Easter date debate between Roman and Celtic traditions. She also happened to mentor Caedmon, the herdsman turned poetic sensation, which must have been a nice side project.
For those interested in lineage, Hilda was grandniece to King Edwin of Northumbria and daughter of someone called Hereric. Her proper name, Hild, means ‘battle,’ which fits rather well given her knack for tackling theological disputes. Baptised at the ripe age of thirteen by Saint Paulinus, she grew up to become a paragon of wisdom, her monastery famed for its intellectual brilliance. The venerable Bede fawned over her as one of England’s greatest women—quite an endorsement from him, no doubt.
Despite suffering six years of fever, Hilda carried on until her death in 680, aged sixty-six. Ever the overachiever, she founded another monastery at Hackness in her final year. In artistic depictions, she often appears clutching Whitby Abbey in one hand, a crown either on her head or placed nearby.
Back to Hinderwell. The church of course is dedicated to her, and her Holy Well likely inspired the village’s name. To spice things up, local legend credits Hilda with ridding the region of snakes, causing them to fossilise into ammonites—conveniently headless ones. These “St. Hilda’s Snakes” litter the coastline, a geological quirk conveniently wrapped in divine narrative. And for a dramatic flourish, seabirds over Whitby Abbey are said to dip their wings in tribute to this miraculous snake decapitation.
As for local traditions, “Shaking Bottle Sunday” was once observed on Ascension Day. Children shook the well water with liquorice to create a drink, not quite Coca-Cola but an innocent attempt at entertaining themselves in pre-internet times.
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