Summer Holiday : An Old Fountain

A fountain that spouts no water wouldn't attract much attention; not even the one in Edinburgh called the Witches’Well which at a glance, looked merely like a small black piece of cast iron plaque featuring a bronze relief of witches’ heads entangled by a snake coiled from a Foxglove plant. A hole beneath the snake’s head used to spout water but not any more; this drinking fountain which marks the spot where thousands of accused witches were persecuted and their remains left where they perished. The plaque was erected above the well in 1912 on the wall of the Tartan Weaving Mill. A philanthropist, Sir Patrick Geddes had commissioned his friend John Duncan to design this drinking fountain for the west side of Castlehill Reservoir next to Ramsay Garden in 1894.

Travelling Tip: Llittle things matter!

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