THE WELL AT SALFORD

It's more than sixty years ago now, even seventy, since I dallied there in the shade of the great Sycamore. That tree stood, a silent sentry at the lands edge, not part of the hedgerow, but mothering it from a rear position on the great bank that brought the Gees field to an end. The road swung gently to the left at that point and dipped as if in reverence. The tree seemed not to notice, for it had other duties. At it's foot there was the well. Older than the tree itself, an ancient place of visitation. The tree both presented the well to the world and protected it from it. I loved that Well.

It must have been a place of some importance in the days the Clachans thrived down every lane for when I came along a full century later, the council still tended it with care. By that time what houses there were in the vicinity all had their own private Wellheads; the treck into the sycamore's shade a thing of the past. But quietly and without any fuss, it remained on the Road Ganger's schedule, something to be attended to when the men at his command were round that way.

Wobbling down muddy country lanes between heavy buckets of water, is not how the agencies sell us the joys of the countryside these days, but if some kind soul were to say to me, "come Val, let us go together to the white-washed well we ran to see on those long-ago afternoon walks to Granny's" I would go willingly enough. My thirst would be not for the water the well still gives but for the voices of those who went there before ever I came to stand and stare. They came not for an afternoon walk but for the water they needed in their homes; the water springing from the earth on which they trod; the water of life.