Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Penylan Well

Reminiscences of old inhabitants of Cardiff:

WILLIAM MORGAN HIER EVANS, (fn. 20) Esq., M.B., whose maternal grandfather, Mr. Morgan, occupied Ty Gwyn (otherwise Pen-y-lan farm), the barn of which now forms the convent chapel, said that the well in the present grounds of Well-Field was formerly on the lands of Ty Gwyn. He could not remember that it bore any distinctive name. He wrote: "My mother tells me that the well at Penylan was a bowl of about six inches in diameter, with a lip that was supposed to be an impression of Jesus Christ's knee. The water emerged from the rock and was walled over. On Easter Monday a large number of people wended their way thither to drop bent pins into the well, but my mother does not remember that any curative value was attached to the well. My father put a stop to the annual pilgrimage when he became tenant of Ty Gwyn Farm.

Dropping bent pins into a well that bore an imprint of Jesus' knee at a place of pilgrimage that can't be all that far from Browne Acres! We should retart this fine Easter tradition.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry, but I don't have two pins to rub together etc........

Nick Browne said...

Have you got one to stick in a map?

John said...

You do realise that the well is under the kitchen extension of 44 do you not ?

chris said...

in a map? why?
c

Nick Browne said...

Sticking it in a map is just what you do with a single pin, you not having two.

Failing that, do you perhaps have a rock to wind a piece of string around?

Anonymous said...

Nick I gave mum and dad a book that describes the well. It was in the back garden. It was very big for a while. Wellfiled Road so called because it leads (or led) to the well field

Nick Browne said...

That is great about Wellfield Road. Obvious once you point it out, but I would never have made the connection.