Mystery
The Womer Woe-Water
When this dry stream ran again, folk braced for famine, plague or battle.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- The village on the River Ver; the brook is lost
- Legend from
- 1400s
- Tone
- Eerie
The stream here once had a grim reputation: when the Womer broke out at Redbourn, people braced for famine, plague or war.
Medieval England had a handful of woe-waters, springs and streams that broke out of dry chalk ground only in certain years, and whose flowing was taken as a warning of disaster. The fifteenth-century chronicler John Warkworth listed a 'Womere' near St Albans among them: when it ran, folk knew that dearth, pestilence or a great battle was coming. Sir Henry Chauncy, writing in 1700, placed it at Redbourn, where a small brook called the Wenmer or Womer sometimes burst out to join the Ver, foretelling famine or some other danger.