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The Pool

The pool, which is actually triangular, was identified as an Immersion Bath associated with the Leechwell Holy Well and scheduled as an Ancient Monument by English Heritage in 2005. Each side is about 13ft long. It is about 2ft deep at the apex and about 3ft 6ins deep at the base, is lined with stone and slate and has two steps leading into it. It is fed by water from the Leechwell, located higher up, 100ft above the garden. Today the water reaches the pool via a culvert or pipe which probably runs outside the wall of the garden, beneath Leechwell Lane.

The Maudlin Leper Hospital

The garden adjoins the grounds assigned to the Maudlin Leper Hospital on the slope above the garden in Maudlin Road. The Maudlin, like many leper hospitals, was established in the 12th Century. Like many, it housed about 12-14 brethren, not all necessarily lepers, and had its own chapel and well. Hospital rules generally required inmates to stay within the hospital grounds, so it is unlikely that they would have used the Leechwell or have been seen much in the town centre. Deeds record that the Maudlin grounds once included a ‘herbe’ or vegetable garden as well as an orchard. The Maudlin Leper Hospital gradually became redundant. It was pulled down and the grounds sold in 1719.

Leprosy was known in England from the 6th Century. It was incurable, and it is likely that from the first lepers would have sought any form of spiritual, magical, medicinal or cleansing.

The Leechwell Holy Well

The Leechwell was Scheduled as a holy well in 2003. It has been described as one of the most ancient and important holy wells in Devon (Faull) and as being a well of high antiquity (Devon County Monuments Register). Its substantial stone structure is built into a deeply cut crossroad site with a raised bench and walled and gated water source. The one source feeds three granite basins, which in turn empty into a large enclosed stone basin. The water is piped beneath the floor of Leechwell Lane but earlier maps (above) show that it once left the well via an open leat through the garden of Leechwell Cottage. From here it entered the pool in the Leechwell Garden.

The Leechwell Stream

The orchard is bounded to the north by the distinctive stepped course of Leechwell Lane, said to follow the line of extra-mural burgage plots dating from the Saxon period. A survey of the garden dated 1873 (see illustration) clearly shows water from the Leechwell flowing through the garden into a pool and then along one side of a cultivated plot tucked behind a bend in the wall of Leechwell Lane. The watercourse eventually joins the stream running through the back gardens of Moorashes and hence to the river Dart.

There is other evidence that the water from the Leechwell once flowed as an open stream from near the well to the pool in the Bungalow Garden. The poster advertising the auction, below left, contains the words: “and a perpetual Stream of the celebrated Leechwell Water runs through the Premises” The 1873 Survey, shown above, shows the path of this stream as a blue line. The 2006 design for the garden reinstated this stream and extended it down through the garden as an open water-course. Unfortunately when work began on the infrastructure in erly 2010 an open watercourse proved impractical for various reasons so the two new water features are instead joined by a conduit running under the lawn.