Nab Well

Rydal

I’m hoping freespiral might let this one in (shh, she might not notice whilst she’s down under!). I don’t think it gets away with being holy (although it is above the church) although it will doubtless have been important for those carrying the dead along the coffin path that it straddles (taking the dead to be buried in Grasmere before the church at Rydal was built). The top was for humans and the bottom for animals.

It’s a beautiful spot, set above Rydal Water, and it was important to Wordsworth when he lived nearby at Rydal Mount. It was the place he was drawn to when they were threatened with having to quit their home, it offered some sense of continuity and connection with his sense of place.
It seemed a good place to be at a time when it feels like living in a dystopian Ballard novel.

I went for a wander up Rydal Beck (extra).

‘For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.’
(from T.S.Eliot’s East Coker, Four Quartets)