| Date | 29 October 2010 |
|---|---|
| Source | Slough Observer |
| Reference | VP-0109 |
| Volume | Views of the Past |
| Collection | Views of the Past |
Transcript
The Queen’s secret spa is now revealed
NESTLING close to the Chalvey Brook, in the Montem area of Slough, was a spring which fed a well, known as Queen Anne’s Well, which many people believed had healing powers.
It is not known when the structure was built, but it may have been on the site of a more ancient spring dedicated to a saint, possibly St Ann. The later name relates to the very beginning of the 18th Century, when water drawn from the well was much used by Queen Anne.
Throughout the 18th century it was the fashion to ‘take the waters’ as a cure for general health ailments and those commonly associated with high living.
The City of Bath was the favoured place for cures from its sulphur-rich spas, as well as being a centre of fashionable society.
Queen Anne suffered badly from gout and had an attack during her Coronation in 1702 when she had to be carried in an open sedan chair.
To help her recovery from her attacks – without having to go all the way to Bath – she became the first female monarch to bring water from Chalvey to Windsor Castle, according to tradition. Water for general purposes, including drinking, was usually taken from the Thames to the castle by means of a water engine as early as 1681. This rather antiquated water engine was renewed by Queen Anne in 1710. The practice of bringing spring water to Windsor Castle was continued during the reign of George III.
His wife, Queen Charlotte, ordered the water to be carried up to the castle in carts and in buckets carried on the backs of donkeys, which must have been quite a sight!
In 1785, George III placed a stone bearing the King’s reign and at Queen Anne’s Well, together with a spout from which the water poured forth into a stone trough.
The water was delivered to the Royal family throughout the King’s reign and continued into the Victorian period.
In 1839, the Great Western Railway Guide proclaimed that, according to Dr Heberden, the Royal Physician, the waters of the Chalvey well were just as rich in healing powers as the spring waters of Malvern.
At this time, water from the spring was also used to brew beer at the nearby Queen Anne Beer House.
By 1858, the stone trough and spout were still visible ‘among a pretty grove of trees and copse wood’, but the path to the well had been closed and allowed to become overgrown.
By the 1870s, all trace of Queen Anne’s Well had disappeared and the location of its site is now lost.
WELL, WELL: Queen Anne’s Well in 1785 showing the George III’s monogrammed stone and spout, above and below, Queen Anne’s Well in 1858 in a pretty wooded glade.
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