St Michaels’s well

Barton

This is my nearest holy well, or what’s left of it, and it has evaded me all this time.
I didn’t go out today with the intention of looking for it but after my ‘nil points’ yesterday it must have been nagging at my well subconscious. I’d been sorting stuff all morning and wanted to have little look at the rapidly thawing snow before it disappeared and so headed off in the direction of Barton church.
For some reason I tend to feel that wearing full waterproofs is a bit like wearing an invisibility cloak so when I got to the Barton junction I just so happened to think I’d have a look at the hedge and then I just happened to wonder if there was a gate into the field adjoining the hedge that I knew led to the site of the well. Well, blow me, there was. Before I knew it I was on the other side doing my very best hedge impersonation, ducking and diving along the ditch. By the time I got to the site (that I’ve poured over by satellite and map for many an hour) I felt like a ‘boil-in-a-bag’ ready meal as I plodged through the increasingly boggy ground. Scrambling through reeds I felt safer ... but ... quick ... duck ... a tractor at 2 o’clock! Suddenly as I was busy ducking and up to my wellies in muddy holy water I thought I could make out some stone work but it may have been my imagination (I’d read somewhere that the Well house had been destroyed by agriculture). Meanwhile, the tractor had headed off towards my exit route. Dash it all. I scrambled over some barbed wire and deeper into the mire. The distance to the church seemed shorter. The hedge line was lower. Dare I chance it? Another tractor started up in the farmyard. I made a dash for it. Tractors to the left of me, tractors to the right of me, along the field of winter wheat fled the well hunter. I spied an old step gate stile through the church wall (clearly it must have once led straight to the well) dead ahead. I legged it over and into the sanctuary of the churchyard.
With a deep sigh of adrenalised relief I adopted my holier than thou look and sauntered out the beautiful old Lych gate and slid off into the darkening early evening gloom.