forum.nationalwellsindex.org.uk

I have just received a copy of the three volume work English Holy Wells A Sourcebook by Jeremy Harte. As a contribution to the field I suspect this will remain unsurpassed in importance. Highly remmended. A review will be following shortly.

Well there are a lot of things to say here. I reiterate the fact that it pulls together a lot of data that needed correlation. In this respect it is marvelous. However, ultimately it falls well short of what it should have been because it does not appear to reach the requirements for an academic work. My two chief complaints are as follows; the editorial control was lax and the book loses its way repeatedly, with some very obvious contradictions that should not never have been allowed in. I ref for example that in some places customs alone are not seen as sufficient to be classified as holy wells, whilst in other places, it seemingly is. Moreover there are some shockingly 'blunt' or dare I say poorly informed comments re. Well history/saint origins. A second more serious criticism is a fundamentally flawed methodology which means that it ever anyone wanted to build on this work they could not. let me explain. In academia when I write a book I make clear what sources I have checked, whether they gave me usable data or not. This work does not do this. So if I wanted to see Well refs only from cartularies for examples, I do not know if Harte has looked at all cartularies, some cartularies or no cartularies. therefore whatever follows will necessarily have to repeat and to a large extent ignore all Harte's work to be accepted by the academic community. My guess is that no academic text will be written for English wells and as such this will remain as I have said a benchmark for the field. But it is no comparison to Jones holy Wells of Wales which is what England really requires. A well, and systematically researched academic text.

I would hope that Jeremy reads this and considers firstly approaching a credible publisher and an academic collaborator (of which there are many Nancy Edwards for one) to create a revised edition of this book, that meets the requirements for an academic text. That revised book would be a genuinely useful definitive literatary sourcebook, and more over, it would be the book this should have been. Certainly the research is there and it deserves to sit amongst academic literature and not reside wholly in the realm of the Bords and the folklore/new age/antiquarian communities. Only this way will holy Well studies move on and gain any kind of widespread credibility. I live in hope that this will happen because Harte is so near to this end already.