Well dressing, where pictorial images are created using natural materials and displayed alongside a well, pump or tap in gratitude for the gift of water, is one of Derbyshire’s best-known traditions.
The custom is most commonly associated with the villages of the White Peak. When I visited Tideswell well dressing in 2017, the information board noted – a little pointedly – that the number of well dressings produced annually were increasing, spreading to the gritstone areas of the Peak District, ‘and even as far afield as Chesterfield’.
Whoever had written the text had not fully done their homework, however, as Chesterfield has a greater history of producing well dressings than is widely appreciated.
In 1864, the town’s Horns Pump was dressed following a drought and a well dressing was made at the same site in 1868. The custom then fell into abeyance for 100 years until 1960, when Philip Rudkin, the art teacher at Brambling House School, took pupils on a trip to the well dressings at Youlgrave, and thought the school could have a go themselves.
They continued making them until 1962 when Mr Rudkin left, and that was the end of well dressing in Chesterfield until 1991, when one was made to accompany an exhibition about Derbyshire traditions at the Peacock Tourist Information Centre. They have been made in the town ever since.
A postcard view from 1905 of the well dressing at St Alkmunds Well with a universal motto Photo: Richard Bradley Derby is another urban centre that has a much greater pedigree than many realise – although, like Chesterfield, the process has been stop-start.
In an unassuming spot at the confluence of two aquatically named roads, Well Street and Bath Street, is Derby’s holy well associated with St Alkmund. Alkmund was a Northumbrian, son of King Alhred, involved in the territorial disputes of the times. His death around 800AD led to him being declared a martyr.
Following Alkmund’s demise he became extraordinarily well-travelled: he was first buried in Shropshire but his remains were later removed to Northworthy, as Derby was then known.
The party conveying the body rested by a spring outside the town walls; soon thereafter the waters became famed for their perceived healing properties and the site was christened St Alkmund’s Well.
Peter Naylor in The Ancient Wells and Springs of Derbyshire records that the well became an important stopping-off point for Northumbrians who found themselves passing through Derby.
So much for resting in peace – in the early 10th century Alkmund was on the move again, to Shrewsbury, but in 1145 his body was conveyed back to Derby. He is now the patron saint of the city.
A church dedicated to him was first built in Derby in the 9th century, with a replacement constructed in 1846. This church was demolished in 1968 to service the burgeoning cult of the motorcar in the creation of an inner ring road, a decision controversial in Derby to this day. A replacement was constructed on Kedleston Road in modernist architectural style.
In The Beauty and Mystery of Well Dressing, the first major survey of the custom published in 1949, Crichton Porteous visited St Alkmund’s Well. ‘Bath Street looked sad’, he wrote, ‘shut in between its unbroken rows of long houses, under a grey sky’. These houses are now gone, replaced by blocks of flats, lending an even more urban character to the modern-day Bath Street.
‘Dismal the well looked in the muddy street under the grey sky’, continues Porteous, ‘the basin was choked with clods, and brick-bats, for this, I found, was the chief play-spot of all the children of the street, who play as children will, careless of antiquity’.
The well was equally popular with local fauna. One local used its still-flowing waters to fill her goldfish bowl, another said it was the only water her cats would drink. Meanwhile surrealist artist Marion Adnams, who lived nearby for most of her 96 years, utilised the water for her pet bird to bathe in.
Porteous describes how the urban siting of the well influenced the unique form the St Alkmund’s dressings took: ‘It never seems to have been customary to dress the well here in quite the same way as elsewhere, partly no doubt because of the great difficulty of getting enough flowers in this shut-in town area. Early descriptions speak of oil-paintings or water-colours, done by local artists, being set up over the well, surmounted by Derby Borough Arms, and surrounded by shrubs and evergreens lent by nurserymen or florists’.
Despite these limitations and improvisations, the dressing of the well at Whitsuntide was an opportunity for wider festivities.
The Sheffield Telegraph of May 27 1874 wrote ‘The floral decoration of the ancient well of St Alkmund has become one of the most notable and attractive Whitsuntide celebrations at Derby’ and describes a procession by local Sunday school children following a service at St Alkmund’s Church.
Canon Abney then delivered a sermon at the well itself, and the paper records, ‘Thousands of people visited the well during the afternoon and evening, and there was dancing’ accompanied by bands.
In 1919, Reverend John Steel Wilding became the new vicar and seems to have been affronted by the vigour of these festivities associated with the well dressing.
Crichton Porteous writes that in Wilding’s view, ‘the ceremony had become mainly an excuse for many persons getting drunk’, and stamped out the blessing and dressing of the well.
The tradition had only recently been revived at the time of Porteous’ visit, in 1946, to celebrate the end of war. As part of the celebrations, tables were set up in the street and a party given for the 90 or so children living on Bath Street.
St Alkmund’s Well was dressed intermittently in the second half of the 20th century, until 1994, when the well dressing was vandalised. Following this, organisers vowed ‘never again’.
Anti-social behaviour persisted and for a spell in the early 2000s the well was shut off behind ugly temporary metal fencing.
Whilst 1994 was the last time a well dressing was displayed, the tradition continued elsewhere in Derby, with smaller-scale dressings produced at sites including the Cathedral, Market Place, Pickford’s House, Royal Derby Hospital, QUAD and the Arboretum.
And attempts have been made to celebrate St Alkmund’s Well since that last dressing in 1994. In 2014, folklorist and holy well expert Ross Parish attended a revived procession to the well, which he described as ‘very colourful’ and thought to be ‘the first time a procession has gone to the well since the 1960s, when the earlier Alkmund’s church was demolished’. After this, the tradition of processing to the well again fizzled out.
In 2021, Steve Ramsden, an admin of the Derby History and Genealogy Facebook group, wished members a ‘Happy St Alkmund’s Day’ on his saint’s day, March 19.
Local resident Rosa Drohomirecka, one of the founders of the community group, tells me, ‘It was the first time I’d heard about St Alkmund, the feast day, and a holy well associated with a Northumbrian prince that’s just minutes away from my house.
‘I was intrigued enough to go to the well and luckily met up with Steve, who told me about its significance. Although I visited Tissington’s well dressings every year, I didn’t appreciate there had been a long tradition of community well dressing at St Alkmund’s Well.’
Ramsden observes, ‘Out of dark times, history and tradition bring a community together. The tradition of dressing St Alkmund’s Well had to be revived after World War One and World War Two. With the loss of St Alkmund’s Church in 1968, the well’s community lost cohesion. Lockdown has brought us back together’.
Steve and Rosa kept in touch, vowing to promote awareness of St Alkmund, his Well, and the community traditions it inspired and Mina Munns, vicar of St Alkmund’s Church, was brought into the fold. Munns officiated at a blessing ceremony at the well in May 2023, attended by 35 people.
The following year the group were more ambitious, as Rosa explains. ‘We approached Derby Cathedral about starting our blessing at the Medieval Bridge Chapel with a procession to the well to reflect the traditional processions that would have taken place from the old St Alkmund’s Church.
‘A couple of residents from the nearby extra care housing decorated the well beautifully with mobile decorations, and we attached cow parsley and a wreath of paper flowers to the railings.’ For the 2024 event, attendance doubled to around 70.
The next logical step for 2025 was to re-instigate a well dressing at the site, the organisers seeking advice from the experienced well dressing teams of nearby Etwall and Chester Green and obtaining a grant from the Derby Association of Community Partners towards materials.
And so, for the first time in a generation, St Alkmund’s Well will again be decorated for the May Spring Bank Holiday, with a traditional theme of ‘Water of Life’, once more bringing a sense of colour and spectacle to this urban corner of Derby.
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