goff’s recent posts on well’s ‘n springs and things got me thinking about the first spring I ever visited. Must have been back in 1958 or 59 when I lived in the Wiltshire village of Purton. I was about 13 at the time, and a friend said he knew of a spring in a field just outside the village. So, one summer’s day we took off to find it. Sure enough the spring was there. A hole in the grass no bigger than a washing-up bowl but the water gently bubbling from it was crystal clear. We watched spellbound as it flowed away in a little stream across the meadow. Neither my friend nor I hesitated to cup our hands and drink from it. Fresh, sparkling and cold. One of those magical childhood moments you never forget.

Some ten years later I was living a stone’s throw away from a 9th century Buddhist temple in the eastern foothills of Kyoto called Sennyu-ji. The ‘ji’ of the word means ‘temple’ while the ‘Sennyu’ means ‘flowing fountain’ – ie an active spring. The spring still flows in the temple grounds today and is still visited and revered by pilgrims. Though Sennyu-ji is now predominately a Buddhist temple there’s also a strong Shinto presence in the form of smaller Shinto shrines dedicated to native Japanese deities.

In the little North Yorkshire village where moss and I now live the church next-door is also just a stone’s throw from a spring that was once used by the villagers. In our travels round the country moss and I have often been struck by the number of little churches that have been built close to a drinkable water source (wells, streams or springs). The church here is Norman but was probably built on an Anglo-Saxon forerunner (it has bits of Anglo-Saxon remains in its walls). And before the Anglo-Saxon church? Well... that’s anyone’s guess, but well’s ‘n springs and things do suggest that those things were perhaps the underlying reason why there so often seems to be a connection between water and religious sites :-)