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Bachwen Burial Chamber

Chambered Tomb

Folklore

This is a bit naughty because there's no clear connection with the stones. I don't really understand how St Beuno seems to avoid being linked with them, when they are so close. His well, 'Ffynnon Beuno' is about half way between the church and the burial chamber (though not on a straight line) - it's at about SH412494. Here are three bits of folklore:
One hundred yards from the church, adjoining the turnpike road, is St. Beuno's well, eight feet square, inclosed with a wall, no doubt, erected by himself, eight feet high, uncovered, and each side about the same dimension, with an entrance from the road.

The well itself is six feet square, the residue of the space is taken up with seats and conveniences for dipping.

The place is now exposed to ruin, and the vilest filth. The spring is suffered to grow up, and the water is not more than a foot deep. I could not perceive it spring up within, and the discharge without would not fill a tube half an inch diameter.

The process observed in the cure was dipping the patient in the well at evening, wrapping him in blankets, and letting him remain all night upon the Saint's tomb [..]

"If a person looks upon this well, and can see the water spring, good luck will attend him; but if he cannot, bad?" What then must become of the half blind! or even of me, whose eyes have been in wear seventy-seven years? [..]

Some ladies have drank at a favorite spring to procure conception; but the slippery damsels of the ten last centuries, have privately drank at St. Beuno's to prevent it.
St Beuno's ruined tomb is in his chapel next to the church; the latter is (according to this book) also supposed to house St Winefred's remains.

From Remarks Upon North Wales, by William Hutton (1804) - p120-122. It's online at Google Books.
Rhiannon Posted by Rhiannon
22nd July 2007ce
Edited 23rd July 2007ce

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