I WOULD NOT advise anyone to drink the water from the wells as it contains traces of lead.
The Wizard's Well
The Wizard's Well is formed by a natural spring near Castle Rock which dates back to pagan times. Carved in the rock above the well is the face of a wizard and the inscription "Drink of this and take thy fill for the water falls by the Wizhard's Will". The carving was added around 200 years ago by Robert Garner, Alan Garner's great-great grandfather who also built the Druid's Circle [9]. The face carving appears to be older than the inscription which is thought to have been added sometime later by a Mr Simeon Slater of Leigh, Lancashire. Another 'face' can be located a few yards along the path towards Castle Rock but this was vandalised about 55 years ago. As with most ancient wells the water was believed to have had magical powers. In the case of the Wizard's Well the water was thought to cure infertility [5]. Not so long ago the water flowed more rapidly and eroded the lip of the well when it became too full.
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The Holy Well
The Holy Well also has pagan links and is probably Anglo-Saxon in age. The well actually consists of a main rectangular well and a smaller wedge-shaped well which is probably older. People used to drink the water from this well as they believed it was a cure for barrenness [7] and it was a custom to drop pins into the well when walking past [14].
Thomas Ridgeway remembers that the houses in the Hough were shaken when a large rock fell from above the well at sometime around 1740. At the time of the rock fall it is said that an old woman and her cow were walking beneath the well and were crushed [7]. It is hard to understand why an old woman and her cow would be walking through the marsh on a vertical slope. The old woman occurs repeatedly in Celtic mythology so perhaps the story's origins lie there [15]. Just above the well is a small sprig of heather, another remnant of the time when the Edge was heath land.
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The Wishing Well
I have it on the authority of a local guide that the Wishing Well is indeed the circular well a few yards below the Holy Well but the two often get mixed up. He likes to believe that passers-by will get 7 years bad luck unless they place a rhododendron leaf in the fissure. The Wishing Well is likely to have pagan links but does not relate to the hollow which predates it. Miners probably created the hollow as a trial working when searching for ore minerals such as copper.
