St.Mary’s Well, Gainford

plus Sleepy Sheep, near Barnard Castle

Across the Pennines in search of sun and holy cures again.
I also wanted to find the erratic ‘Sleepy Sheep’ stone (a boulder of Shap granite, one of the ‘Teesdale Erratics’) that I hadn’t had time to visit last week. I find it gobsmackingly amazing that this has been carried all the way from near where I live (about 40 miles) and been deposited here by ice. This is one of a number deposited in this area.

I went on to find St.Mary’s well which flows into the Tees river just below the church in the lovely village of Gainford (the Well is to the left in the image and you can see the church above - the river is just behind me). It is on the site of an old Anglo-Saxon monastery and believed to be the ford across which St.Cuthbert’s body was carried. There were also some fascinating carved medieval stones in the porch...http://www.gainfordwinstonanglican.com/history-of-gainford

It’s the first time I’ve come across a ‘spite house’.

Windy and cold out, so I was very glad to get back in the warm by the fire with a cuppa, which made me think of Thomas de Quincey...
“Surely everybody is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter fireside, candles at four o’clock, warm hearth-rugs, tea, a fair tea maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies on the floor whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without”.
- Confessions of an English Opium-Eater