Chalice Well, Glastonbury

The red spring

The water carries dissolved iron, which oxidises on contact with air and coats the channels and basins in a deep ochre red. A second spring nearby, the White Spring, is heavy with calcium and leaves the opposite colour. Two springs, two minerals, a few dozen metres apart — the sort of coincidence that a landscape does not have to try hard to make meaningful.

The flow is remarkably steady, running through droughts that have emptied wells elsewhere in Somerset. Its reliability is part of its reputation: a spring that fails is a spring that has withdrawn its favour, and this one has not.

The Grail story

Medieval and later legend ties Glastonbury to Joseph of Arimathea, and the red water to the blood of Christ, with the Grail said to be buried at the spring. There is no historical evidence for any of it, and the Chalice Well Trust that cares for the garden does not pretend otherwise.

The story still does work. It explains why a Christian pilgrimage, a pagan revival and a great many people with no religion at all end up sitting around the same wellhead without much friction.

The wellhead and the vesica piscis

The wooden cover over the well was designed by Frederick Bligh Bond in 1919, as a memorial gift after the First World War. Its wrought-iron design is a vesica piscis — two overlapping circles, an old symbol of two worlds meeting along a shared edge.

It is the single most photographed object in the garden, and it is worth noticing that it is a lid. Bath enclosed its spring behind stone; Glastonbury covers its well with iron and wood. Wishing places are almost always places you cannot quite reach into.

What people leave

Ribbons and strips of cloth tied to branches and railings, small stones, flowers, sometimes a written note. The practice of tying cloth at a healing spring is old and widespread across Britain and Ireland, where such places are called clootie wells — the rag rots, and as it rots the trouble it stands for is supposed to fade.

Coins are not the currency here. The garden asks visitors not to leave anything that will not decay, which rules out most of what people instinctively want to give. You can drink the water from the lion's head spout, sit at the healing pool, and leave with nothing in your hands, which for a lot of visitors turns out to be the harder version of the ritual.

If you go

The garden is open daily, with an admission charge that supports its upkeep, and it is deliberately quiet — no music, no picnics on the lawns during peak hours, and a general expectation that you will speak softly.

Bring a bottle if you want to take water away; the spout at the entrance to the garden flows freely. The iron taste is strong and not to everyone's liking.

Questions people ask

Can you throw coins into Chalice Well?

No. The garden asks that nothing non-biodegradable is left at the well. The local tradition uses cloth tied to branches, which decays, rather than metal, which does not.

Can you drink the water?

Yes, from the spout provided at the garden. It is strongly chalybeate — heavy with iron — and tastes of it.

Keep reading

• Prague, Czechia

  St John of Nepomuk, Charles Bridge

  Prague's wishing ritual costs nothing and involves no water. You put your hand on a bronze relief worn gold by millions of others.

• Barcelona, Spain

  Font de Canaletes, Barcelona

  A small iron fountain at the top of La Rambla with one rule: drink from it and you will return to Barcelona.

• Central Park, New York, United States

  Bethesda Fountain, New York

  An angel blessing the water, commissioned to celebrate the arrival of clean water in a city that had been dying of the lack of it.