A Famous Well on a Northern Height

Now that the new church of Our Lady of Muswell is rising in Colney Hatch Lane, the first stone having been laid a week ago, there may be and should be, a revived interest in what was at one time a pilgrimage shrine of wide renown. Muswell Hill today is more widely known as the site of the Alexandra Palace, especially since the corning of television, than by anything connected with its ancient history. Yet the very name takes us at
once to religious associations. Muswell Hill is so called from the famous well, near the crown of the hill. at a spot where the fraternity of St. John of Jerusalem at Clerkenwell had their dairy. There they built a chapel in which was a much-revered image of Our Lady of Muswell.
The water of the well was greatly reputed for the cure of skin troubles, It is said that among those who sought its healing properties was a King of Scotland, perhaps Malcolm IV, who reigned in the twelfth century.
The farm and dairy on the hill were looked after by Benedictine nuns from the church of Our Lady of Clerkenwell. Old maps show the land, about sixty-five acres in extent.
Already in the thirteenth century the well and chapel were a place of pilgrimage. An interesting leaflet which the Rector, the Rev. A. M. Cuming, has issued in connection with the new church, has many useful particulars. -Pilgrimages to the shrine went on right up till the time of the Reformation.
The Faith Returns
After nearly four hundred years of religious veneration, the shrine of Our Lady of Muswell was destroyed, in the sixteenth century, consequent on the dissolution of the Benedictine priory at Clerkenwell.
In 1904, Fr. Corning's leaflet tells us, a community of nuns of St. Martin of Tours took a house in Tetherdown. There a chapel was once more erected at Muswell Hill, and there, early in May, 1904, Mass was once more offered up.
Muswell Hill's well is still to be found. It is situated in the front garden of a house, now called " Monkswell," at 40, Muswell Road.