Well Dressing

Time is growing short -- the first of our students return to the U.S. this week -- things are getting busy, so we need to do all the exploring we can in the time left.


On Monday 21 May, Mary and I took a short drive to the village of Tissington, in neighboring Derbyshire. This tiny place probably doesn't have more than a couple hundred residents, but each spring the community pulls together for the annual "well dressing." Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, so photos here are stolen from the web.

From bbc.co.uk

Tissington is blessed with water -- six wells and a stream running through town. Each year at Ascension Day (40 days after Easter), the town's folk "dress" the wells with floral displays. Most have religious or patriotic themes (in this country there is considerable overlap between the religious and the patriotic).

From parwich.org

Most of the displays are made from wooden boards on which local clay is smeared. Then, flower pedals, seeds, leaves, twigs, or other natural items are pressed into the clay to create the display. They are sort of on the order of the floral floats at the Rose Parade in Pasadena each New Year's Day. The displays stay up for a week and thousands come to see them.

From tissingtonhall.co.uk

No one is quite certain when or how this tradition began, but some guess it goes back to pre-Christian times. They may have been an offering to a pagan water goddess, then appropriated into Christianity. Or perhaps, much later, they were a thank-offering for surviving the Plague, which centuries ago some believed to have been caused by bad water. Whatever the origin, the tradition remains.