Robert Morrell
The Robin Hood/St. Ann’s Well was by no means the only medicinal spring in the St. Ann’s valley, for there were at least two more we know of, the waters of both having the reputation for being good for treating eye complaints. Each was called the Rag Well, the name coming from the practice of visitors leaving the fragments of the damp linen they used to bathe their eyes with hanging from nearby bushes. First mentioned by Deering in the 17th century, one was was situated at the bottom corner of New Road, or Coppice New Road, Ransom Road (on the Nottingham Enclosure Map, Clayfields and Mapperley Hills, the spring is shown in plot No.511), the second being in a field on the left hand side when entering Thornycroft Road, formerly Wood Lane, from St. Ann’s Well Road (Nottingham Guardian, 20/7/1918). According to Deering the first spring sometimes ceased to flow during the summer whereas the second, being at lower level, never failed.
In 1887 a police station was erected adjacent to the first spring and the well bricked up, however, its water was run through an iron pipe to a drinking fountain placed in a nearby wall. In 1890 a shelter for cabmen was built next to the police station and the drinking fountain replaced by another which took its water from the Corporation mains supply.
According to the Nottingham geologist, James Shipman, the water of the rag wells was good for sore eyes because in percolating down from the Mapperley Hills, where he claimed it had fallen as rain, the water had crossed a bed of clay containing Fuller’s Earth. Shipman wrote of personally experiencing the beneficial effect of the water from the rag springs, claiming to have been excellent for remedy relieving inflammation of the eyes. In his youth, he wrote, he had heard local people advising visitors to take some of it away with them in bottles. The fate of the first Rag Well has been given above, the second seems to have survived into the 1920s, when we hear no more about it, so it must be assumed it was blocked off when houses were constructed on its site.
Article Originally Published in Hidden History Magazine.
Nottingham Hidden History Team 