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St Margaret

St Margaret

Binsey

Oxfordshire

The site of the oratory of St Frideswide in Saxon times. The well was a place of pilgramage, visited by Henry VIII, and features in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as the 'treacle well'.

SAXONC13C15

Architectural Features

C13

Chancel and nave rebuilt C13; South porch added in C13.

C15

C15 East wall of chancel rebuilt.

St. Margaret's Well is a Grade II Listed Building, which is the model for Lewis Carroll's "Treacle Well" from Alice in Wonderland; this is a holy well dedicated to St Frideswide, patron saint of Oxford. She had fled to Binsey in a bid to escape marriage to a king of Mercia, whose pursuit of her was halted when he was struck blind at the gates of Oxford. Frideswide's prayers brought forth a healing spring, whose waters cured his blindness, and the spring was walled into a shallow well which became something of a focus for pilgrimage, the mediaeval sense of the word 'treacle' meaning 'healing unguent'. The well became a pilgrimage site in medieval times.
SAXON

The well of St Frideswide, an important place of pilgramage, dating from Saxon times.

St. Margaret's Well is a Grade II Listed Building, which is the model for Lewis Carroll's "Treacle Well" from Alice in Wonderland; this is a holy well dedicated to St Frideswide, patron saint of Oxford. She had fled to Binsey in a bid to escape marriage to a king of Mercia, whose pursuit of her was halted when he was struck blind at the gates of Oxford. Frideswide's prayers brought forth a healing spring, whose waters cured his blindness, and the spring was walled into a shallow well which became something of a focus for pilgrimage, the mediaeval sense of the word 'treacle' meaning 'healing unguent'. The well became a pilgrimage site in medieval times.

© Steve Daniels