Well Dressing in Ashford in the Water

WELL DRESSING IN THE PEAK DISTRICT

According to the official programme,

"Well Dressing began in pagan times, as a form of thanking the Water Gods for clean water. ...gradually it changed to primitive man hanging garlands of flowers over the wells and then developed into creating pictures in clay and boards that were and still are displayed at wells and old pumps."

It is an activity found almost exclusively in Derbyshire.  It is done as a community activity and

"can be described as the art of decorating springs and wells with pictures made from local plant life such as petals of flowers like hydrangeas, forget-me-nots,berries and leaves as well as other natural materials like dried herbs, stones, pulses and seeds."

 













As mentioned in a previous blog, it started in Ashford in the Water the day we arrived and I dropped in on a couple of places where they were putting the pictures together during the week. 

When we got up Saturday morning they were all in place.  There are six wells in Ashford and we spent an interesting morning wandering around photographing them and talking to lots of people.  It is a major draw card for tourists and there have been bus loads arriving each day.

One of the ladies who helped with the Protection of Birds picture told us that as they were putting it together, they decided to replace the peanuts they had intended to put in the bird feeder with pulses because past experience has shown that some of the elements used in the artwork was also attractive to birds.  Apparently the birds find the wool used in some of the designs useful for their nests and corn and peanuts are an attractive bird food.  Will follow the happenings with interest  during this coming week while all the dressings are in place.

All the dressings are works of art but my favourite is the Top Pump well which is celebrating 450 years of Shakespeare.  I was watching as one of the women working on this one was painstakenly using carnation petals for the skirt in Titania's dress.

IN THE BEGINNING

As well as the Wells Dressing there is a beautiful exhibition of flowers in the Church.  The theme for the floral exhibition this year is Creation and one of the ministers had a joke based on that theme:  "A kid asks his Christian mother how the human race was made.  Her reply was that God did it.  He then asked his Atheistic dad who said that the human race had evolved from apes, gibbons,  monkeys etc.  When the kid told the mother she said "oh I was talking about my side of the family and he was talking about his."  He told this at the start of a ceremony which involved a service inside the Church and then a procession to bless each of the 6 wells. 

BIRDS OF THE AIR AND FISH OF THE SEA

GARLANDS AROUND THE PILLARS

 




The procession was led by the Bakewell Silver Band, and was followed by the clergy - but there were no women other than acolytes.  


 

 

THINK THIS MIGHT BE THE BISHOP. 

Prior to the procession there was also a demonstration of sheep washing which was practised by the local farmers because clean fleeces free from insects and lanolin fetched better prices.

GET READY

SPLASH

GET A GOOD HOLD

NOW A GOOD WASH

 around town there are also scarecrows.  Here are a couple of them:

The Bowler's HOLDING the Batsman's WILLEY

 (Norm Johnston)

SPIDERMAN TO THE RESCUE - DON'T UPSET THE WIFE.