ON Saturday, the 50th anniversary of the Save Flass Vale protest picnic is being celebrated with a photographic exhibition and the restoration of an ancient, and possibly haunted, well.
The vale, in the Redhills area of Durham, was sculpted by glaciers in the last Ice Age, and by the 1970s, was being eaten into by housing. In 1973, a bulldozer was seen apparently starting groundworks for more houses which had been given permission 10 years earlier. It disturbed a badger which regarded the valley as its own residence, and it stirred local people to start their campaign to save the green lung with a picnic.
The campaign resulted in the planning permission being revoked and, in 1974, the vale being taken into public ownership. Later, it was designated as a Local Nature Reserve.
This nature reserve is looked after by the Friends of Flass Vale who, along with the parish council, are celebrating the 50th anniversary with an exhibition in Waddington Street Church Hall, which opens at 6.30pm on Saturday.
It will be preceded at 6pm by a ceremony at Flass Well to mark its restoration by the university’s archaeology department.
The well, beneath the Durham Miners’ Association’s fabulous Redhills hall, is one of about six “holy wells” that have kept the city watered for centuries. Springs which provided continuous fresh, safe water have been treated with the greatest reverence since pagan times, and as Christianity took hold, they were often dedicated to saints whose miraculous intervention caused the life-giving water to flow freely from the ground.
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In County Durham, there are at least 30 holy wells, the best preserved being the Holy Well in Wolsingham, which is dedicated to saints Godric and Aelric.
Others now are lost, just names on a map hinting at a sacred spot: Holywell Burn at Willington, Holywell House at Staindrop or Halliwell Beck at Heighington.
Flass Well, which can be reached by the steps at the top of Mowbray Street and Flass Street, was used by local people as recently as the hard winters of 1947-48 and 1962-63 when their other sources of water had frozen, but then it became very overgrown and forgotten.
Ready for the 50th anniversary, it has been restored – but will the White Lady, also known as Jeannie, still haunt the well?
In 1789, a maid, Jane Ramshaw, was “decoyed from her house at night and murdered”. Several men were interviewed, but no culprit was found, although it is said that some years later, a soldier at the gates of death on a continental battlefield confessed to the murder.
And so unavenged, Jeannie was said to haunt the damp, dark track by the well where her life was cruelly taken.
However, the word “flass” is an old, northern term meaning “marshy”, and the continuously gushing well would have helped give rise to murky mists through half-seen shapes could flit complaining about how they were murdered many moons ago…
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