Almost by definition, Holy Wells are the meeting places of the tangible and the intangible - the drinkable and the dowsable. Locations where documentary evidence merges with esoteric mysticism to create somewhere very special.

Landscape historian Terry Faull has made a comprehensive study of these sacred springs and it is a revelation to discover that over 200 Holy Wells still exist in Devon alone. They are not an isolated curiosity, but a widespread, if little understood, part of the social and physical landscape.

Faull's research has found that, at over half of the documented sites, there is a tradition of the healing of the eyes and, to this day, a number of such places are still called Eyewell.

The persistence of the Holy Well, despite official proscription and abandonment, only heightens the reality of their original attraction. People, with a very different world-view to our own, had discovered that water from certain springs was more beneficial physically, and perhaps spiritually. They marked and venerated those places - and, several millennia later, some of the successors of those distant people are still taking note of their properties in the age of the Space Shuttle.

Terry spends much of this very readable 140-page book discussing and describing his own images of Holy Wells garnered from across the county. The depth and breadth of his knowledge of his subject are most impressive. He has clearly journeyed himself from interested academic to passionate promoter - but perhaps his most valuable contribution has been to carry the fading baton of knowledge of this niche field of study into cyberspace.

There are several good books on the Holy Wells of Cornwall - but this is the only one about Devon - a must-read for the seriously spiritual and the dowsing tourist alike.

Nigel Twinn,

Tamar Dowsers,

May 2005