Down a strange lane

Miscommunication between Husband and I led to me taking a stroll down streets I'd not ventured before and I discovered this on a wall in a small alleyway.

I'd never heard of St. Helen's Holy Well before so I did a little research. Not that I could find out much more than it says on the wall. In case you can't read it - it was a narrow alley so impossible to get a good image - it says there was once a holy well near that spot. From pre-Christian times it was venerated and survived the reformation but not the road-building works in the 1890s. The waters were drunk or bathed in and were said to heal anything from asthma to ulcers. In the 1700s the owners of St. Helen's House, through whose grounds the well flowed erected a pump to make it more accessible.

Nearby is St. Helen's rugby and cricket club, which apparently takes its name from a convent that was built by an order of Augustinian nuns on the foreshore during the Medieval period. The foreshore in those days was much further inland and, in fact, land that the rugby pitch now occupies, was reclaimed from sandbanks back in 1873. 

You may notice that the well contained Chalybeate waters. Again I had no idea what those were so another google. (What did we do before google?) Chalybeate refers to any water that contains iron salts, and according to A Topographical Dictionary of Wales by Samuel Lewis 1833, "Near the town there is a chalybeate spring, called Swansea Spa, which was formerly much resorted to for the highly medicinal properties of the water, though at present it is not much frequented, having almost fallen into disuse."

Mr Lewis also mentions another spring about six miles further around the coast at Caswell. "There is a remarkably fine spring, which, though always overflowed by the sea at high water, retains not, on its retiring, the slightest saline admixture."

Isn't it great when you find out new and surprising things? Education is definitely wasted on the young. I didn't enjoy it then but I do now.