The Holy Wells of Hail Weston

Hail Weston: two springs here, one sweet and one salt, once drew crowds who swore they cured sore eyes and skin disease.

In the 1500s two springs near the village of Hail Weston, one sweet and one salty, became famous for cures. Holinshed's Chronicles said the salt spring helped scabs and leprosy and the sweet one dim sight, and that people hurried from church to the wells faster than to any fair. Michael Drayton's poem Poly-Olbion turned the springs into two wood nymphs whose divine lovers gave them their healing gifts, one through falling tears. Thomas Fuller joked about the village name meaning health. A notice once charged five shillings a month to drink the waters, but by the nineteenth century the wells had fallen out of use.