I arrive at Ashbrittle village green to find six other women already busy with secateurs and wire, surrounded by trugs full of flowers. I am here for a brand new ancient ceremony: decorating and blessing the well.
In Derbyshire this sort of thing has been going on for at least 700 years, but the Ashbrittle well dressing began just two years ago. My friend J proposed it to her neighbours during the first lockdown – a way to gather safely outside, to counteract isolation and fear, and to reconnect with the local landscape and the elements.
The well was, until as late as the 1960s, the only water source for the all the houses round here: a blessing indeed. But last year, for the first time, it ran dry. No one’s quite sure why, although the finger points to some building works nearby disrupting the underground aquifer. J has placed an iron cauldron beneath the jutting pipe and filled it with water for the ceremony. She puts a tealight on a small wooden dish filled with wild strawberries and sets it afloat in the centre.
If this is going to be an annual event, one of the women says, we really need to call ourselves something. The suggestion of Ashbrittle Maidens provokes an outburst of cackles. “Bit late for that. Crones, more like!”
As twilight comes on, we stand back to admire our handiwork. The slender hazel wands of the archway have disappeared beneath a cascade of Canterbury bells, wild geranium, bright pink valerian and twists of wisteria. The dome of the well is crowned with a jar full of cow parsley, wild carrot and flowering grasses, and the edges framed with rose petals and sprigs of lavender. Tomorrow, the flowers will have wilted, the candles blown out.
The whole thing reminds me of a Hindu shrine – the flowers, the diyas, the garlands, the offering, the transience. Whether subterranean spring or falling as rain, water is the earth’s blood: the wellspring of all life. And suddenly it doesn’t seem at all far-fetched to imagine molecules from the Ganges rejoicing to find themselves flower-strewn and candlelit again in this small corner of England.
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