Well Dressing is the traditional art of decorating springs and wells with pictures made from natural materials. Complex, beautiful pictures are created often with many members of the town or village involved putting in many hours of effort.

It is unclear how long ago this tradition started but it was done to celebrate the blessing of clean water from the local spring or well.

To set a foundation for the picture, a wooden board is soaked for a few days and then filled with clay. Different villages use different methods for transferring the outline of the picture onto the clay. Some use wool, while others use bark or alder cones, known locally as 'blacks'.

The picture is then coloured in, known by some villages as 'petaling' or 'flowering' depending on whether the whole flower head or just the petals from various flowers are used to construct the picture.

There are often religious themes to the pictures but you will also see historical scences, animals and birds and farming depicted. You may even see the occasional Disney scene shown.

These Well Dressings are immensely intricate and detailed and can take a team of people up to a week to complete even though the Dressing itself will only last 7 - 10 days before the clay dries out and the flowers fade.

Well Dressings run at various places from May to September and are well worth a visit. The link below will give you a calendar of Well Dressings in the Peak District during the summer of 2008.

Well Dressings Calendar 09

(This well dressing calendar is reproduced here by kind permission of Glyn Williams. More information on well dressings can be found at www.welldressing.com)