FAIR ROSAMUND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20586, 8 December 1928, Page 21

FAIR ROSAMUND.

HER BATHING WELL DISCOVERED. Discoveries which have just been made by workmen engaged in digging at Rosamund's Well, in Blenheim Park, have revived interest in the ancient history of Woodstock and the legend of Fair Rosamund (states the Oxford correspondent of the Daily Telegraph). The Duke of Marlborough required a supply of water to feed the fountains in the new ornamental gardens which are under construction at Blenheim Palace, and some mouths' search has been neces-sai-y in order to locate the spring which fed the well. This has now been found, together with the low stone arch surmounting it, which, in all probability, dates .back to the time of fair Rosamund herself. The spring had been walled up, probably more than a century ago, and the wall above it is carved with the initials of eighteenth-century pilgrims to the well, and with dates ranging from 1722—about the time of the completion of Blenheim —to 1799. Behind the wall, in the basin below the spring, has been found an accumulation of fragments of carved stone, which may be relics of the old royal palace of Woodstock, where Elizabeth was imprisoned by Queen Mary, and which figures largely in Scott's novel. The palace was finally demolished by orders of the first Duchess of Marlborough. . - The spring at present, even after the summer drought, furnishes nine gallons of |water a minute. Its water is still regarded locally as having healing properties. The well itself, a stone basin 10 or 12 feet square, where local tradition says that Rosamund bathed when hidden "at Woodstock by King Henry 11, is to be cleaned and put once more into proper order. Tradition states that Queen Eleanor found her way through a labyrinth to the bower where the well is situated by means of a silken thread.