St Augustine's Well, Cerne Abbas

The spring rises gently and runs clear into a shallow pool, then away through a stone-lined channel. It is a still, prayerful spot, shaded and softly green, where people have come to pause for many centuries.

The pool is ringed by lime trees known locally as the Twelve Apostles, and visitors still tie prayers and ribbons to the branches. Beside the waters stands a stone bench carved with a verse of scripture, placed to mark the millennium.

A chapel dedicated to St Augustine once stood over the spring. It was lost at the Dissolution of the monasteries in 1539, though the well it sheltered remains.

St Augustine of Canterbury came to England in 597 to bring the Christian faith. Tradition says he travelled west into Dorset, where he met a group of shepherds in the valley.

As the story goes, he asked whether they would rather drink water or beer. They chose water, and the saint struck the ground so that a spring rose up, and he cried "Cerno El", meaning "I perceive God", a play on the old name of the village, Cernel.

It is a lovely tale, and almost certainly a later medieval one. The miracle was recorded by the eleventh-century writer Goscelin, most likely to give the abbey a grander origin. We tell it here as cherished tradition rather than settled history.

Older still, and better remembered here, is the story of St Eadwold. In the ninth century Eadwold, said to be a brother of St Edmund, King and Martyr of East Anglia, gave up the offer of a crown to live as a hermit.

Following a vision of a silver well, he came to Cerne. He bought bread and water from a shepherd, whom he paid in silver, and knew the well at once as the one from his vision. He built his cell beside it and lived simply on bread and spring water until his death around 871.

His memory drew pilgrims, and in the tenth century his relics were brought into a church at Cerne, not long before the abbey was founded in 987.

Like many holy springs, the well gathered gentler customs over the years. It has long been thought of as a wishing and healing well, its water said to soothe sore eyes, and newborn children were once dipped in it at sunrise.

Young women would pray here, sometimes to St Catherine, for a good husband. One old tale even holds that those who look into the water on Easter morning may glimpse who is fated to die in the year to come.

These are folk customs rather than the teaching of the Church, but they are part of the well's long story, and a reminder of how dearly the place has been held.