Out of Area Well Dressings

Many traditions throughout the world decorate wells with flowers at certain times of the year, but the custom of making pictures and designs out of petals, leaves and other materials pressed onto a board covered with clay is often though to be unique to Derbyshire. Although the latter tradition certainly began in Derbyshire, at Tissington, it long ago spread further afield. One of the villages with the longest history of Well Dressing is Endon, in Staffordshire. In more recent years the tradition has spread even further afield from its origins, and a number of dressings can now be found in the former counties of Cheshire and Yorkshire. These are considered for the purposes of this website to be “on our patch”, and so (where details are available) are included in the main Calendar.

However, the Derbyshire style of Well Dressing has spread further than this. We may identify several categories:

Twinning

Many Derbyshire towns and villages are twinned with places abroad. Sometimes a Well Dressing team from the Derbyshire venue will visit their twin and make a Well Dressing there to demonstrate the tradition. I am aware of this happening in Die, the twin of Wirksworth, and on at least two occasions in Osnabrück, the twin of Derby. A friendship agreement which did not, in the end, lead to a twinning resulted in dressers from Youlgrave visiting Erbach im Odenwald. There may have been other examples.

Exports

When a Derbyshire resident moves to another locality, sometimes they will introduce the Well Dressing tradition to their new home. This is the original reason behind many of the dressings that now take place just outside the county, but sometimes they have appeared much further afield, even as far away as Perth, Western Australia.

Sometimes the tradition will take root and lead to:

Regular Out of Area Events

The following venues are known to have performed a Well Dressing on a more or less regular basis in recent years.

• Frome has been dressing since 1989. St John's Church website has pictures of past Well Dressings. Dates for 2008: start 24th May
• Much Wenlock has been dressing since 1996. Dates for 2008: start 31st May
• Upwey near Weymouth has been dressing since at least 2002. This is considered by locals to be a particularly appropriate site for a Well Dressing, since it is believed that Weymouth is the port through which the Plague entered England, eventual deliverance from which led the inhabitants of Tissington to create the Well Dressing tradition. Dates for 2008: start 3rd May
• Bisley near Stroud is often quoted as an example of a Well Dressing site, and it does have a long standing tradition of decorating its well with floral motifs each Ascension Day. However, it does not have the defining characteristic of the Derbyshire style of Well Dressing, namely the picture or design made of natural materials pressed onto a board.

Pugnaloni

Although not strictly Derbyshire style Well Dressings, inasmuch as the petals and other materials are glued to boards rather than fixed in clay, and moreover they are not associated with sources of water, these little known art forms merit a mention here because some of the techniques used are common to both traditions.

The Pugnaloni are made in June each year in the Italian town of Acquapendente. When completed, the giant 2.60 m x 3.60 m (7 ft x 10 ft) boards are displayed over the course of a single weekend outside the Town Hall, and the best are awarded prizes. The tradition is said to date back to the 12th century, when the flowering of a cherry tree long thought dead was the inspiration to the peasants to rise up and throw off the oppressive rule of Frederick Barbarossa. Thus the history goes back even further than that of the Derbyshire tradition, though of course the present form of petalled boards are a more recent innovation.