Learn the story of the fantastic well that turns everything to stone
The story we will tell below involves a well located in England that has been famous for centuries for turning all sorts of things - such as toys, utensils, clothes, plants and even dead animal bodies - into stone. This curious site is in the town of Knaresborough, in the north of Yorkshire County, and the first record of the well's supposed magical powers is from 1538.
The first account of the "petrifying" well is by John Leyland, the antiquarian of King Henry VIII who, in the 16th century, wrote about the miraculous medicinal powers of the local waters. According to him, the place was very popular with the locals, and it was common for them to go there to bathe and drink from the Knaresborough Well.
By the way, according to local legend, it was around this time that a woman known as Mother Shipton - or Mother Shipton in free translation - became famous in the region. She lived in a cave near the famous well, where she was born during a terrible storm.
Devil's daughter
Shipton was allegedly born in 1488 and the daughter of a local prostitute named Agatha - who was only 15 years old when she became pregnant. The girl never revealed the name of the child's father, and without family or friends to help her, she decided to live with the baby in the cave where she gave birth.
Over time, the local abbot, pitying Agatha's situation, decided to send the girl to live in a distant convent. The girl was eventually adopted by a family from Knaresborough, named Ursula Sontheil. But since she had a deformed body, it was not long before rumors began to spread that she was the Devil's daughter.
As you can imagine, Ursula had no easy childhood, and grew up on suspicion of being a cursed child. Of course, the fact that, according to legend, she's also a girl, let's say ... peculiar, didn't help her fame much. It is said that she spent much of her time studying the herbs, plants and flowers of the forest, and made potions and medicines with the material she collected.
In addition, Ursula even made some prophecies - including the defeat of the Spanish Armada by England and the Great Fire of London - which eventually sealed her reputation as a witch. Interestingly, she even married a young man named Tobias Shipton, whose name he adopted, but for some reason the relationship didn't work out, and she decided to return to the cave by the well.
Mother Shipton
Ursula Shipton supported herself by selling her medicinal potions and also making predictions about the future. For visitors began to notice that the objects around the cave and the well gradually turned to stone and, not surprisingly, associated the phenomenon with supposed spells cast by Shipton.
Luckily, Mother Shipton did not become the target of any witch hunt, and she died in 1561 at the age of 73 - a real feat for someone who lived in the 16th century. And after the death of the “witch”, both the cave where she lived, like the oil well, became a kind of tourist attraction for the wealthy families in the area.
Interestingly, unlike most wells and caves that create stalactites and stalagmites in Knaresborough, instead of centuries before objects begin to be covered by layers and more layers of minerals, they are It only takes a few months for the formations to appear. To give you an idea, it takes about three to five months for a teddy bear to be petrified.
Another interesting fact is that in 1630 a man named Sir Charles Slingby became the owner of the land that contained the cave and the well, and began to charge a fee to the onlookers who came to the site. As a result, Slingby has transformed the Knaresborough Well into one of the world's first paid tourist attractions - and it continues to function today.
* Posted on 7/10/2016
