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 What is Well Dressing?Its origins are something of a mystery and may date back to the Celts or even earlier. The church banned it as water worship, but the tradition refused to die. Tissington revived the custom in 1349, Barlow started dressing wells in Elizibethan times and Tideswell began 'tap dressing' when piped water came to town. Well dressing is only found in or near Derbyshire and, at its simplest, it's the art of decorating springs and wells with pictures made of growing things. So how can such intricate and detailed pictures be made using only flowers, berries, leaves?? It all starts with a wooden board that's thrown into the local river to soak for a few days. Then it is hauled out and filled with soft, wet clay. The next job is transferring the outline of the picture to the clay, and every village has its own way of doing this. Some use wool, others use bark or alder cones, known locally as blacks. Then the picture is coloured in. Some villagers call this petalling, but in Holymoorside it's flowering because instead of petals they use whole flower heads. Dressing a well can take a team of people up to 7 days to complete and it will only last about a week before the clay dries and cracks and the flowers fade. |
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