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The Northern Antiquarian Forum

Archaeology, folklore & myth of Britain's pre-christian sites & heritage: stone circles, holy wells, maypoles, tombs, archaic cosmologies and human consciousness. Everyone welcome - even Southerners!


    Robin Hoods/Fox's Well Cross, Pendle Hill

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    Robin Hoods/Fox's Well Cross, Pendle Hill Empty Robin Hoods/Fox's Well Cross, Pendle Hill

    Post  Guest Tue Oct 20, 2009 4:13 am

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    A round-headed cross once stood by this holy well. It was found some 25 years ago by myself and others and brought down to a place of safety. It now stands on a plinth above the sedilia in Whalley parish church.
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    Robin Hoods/Fox's Well Cross, Pendle Hill Empty FOX'S or ROBIN HOOD'S WELL, PENDLE HILL.

    Post  Guest Sat Mar 20, 2010 6:28 am

    Open the steel lid to find a chained goblet from which to drink from this ancient and most revered spring.

    This well was once dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and a round-headed stone cross stood above the well. The head of this cross now sits above the sedilia in Whalley Parish Church.

    No doubt the origin of veneration to this sacred spring goes back to pre-xtian times.

    This well is also known as Robin Goodfellow’s Well. ‘Robin Goodfellow, His Mad Pranks & Merry Jests,’ was published in 1639, and was fondly recounted by members of the ‘new’ local gentry/Masonic mafia.

    Robin is depicted as an ithyphallic god of the witches with young ram’s horns sprouting from his forehead, ram’s legs, a witches’ besom over his left shoulder, a lighted candle in his right hand. Behind him in a ring dance a coven of part naked witches in Puritan costume, a black dog venerates him, a minstrel plays a horn and an owl flies overhead.

    It was at this time when the ancient Marian Holy Well on the east flank of Pendle was renamed Robin Goodfellow’s Well (much later it became known as Robin Hood’s Well) by the new landholders. This was done not only out of jest but out of pure hatred for the Old Roman Faith, that still held firm in most quarters of Lancashire, and up-and-coming dissenters to State Faith. The Masonic Mafia of that time doubtlessly remembered too the perjury they had committed against Alice Nutter a Catholic Gentlewoman in her eighties, mother of Robert and John Nutter, both Roman Catholic priests who faced martyrdom without fear and with free will.

    George Fox, a man of the Inner Light, had his great vision on Pendle and later drank his fill from this well and went on to found the Society of Friends. The Quaker converts, who were many around Pendle, re-named the well to his memory.

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