Tissington Well Dressing

After my post a few weeks ago about A Day Out In Derbyshire, I had a lovely message from an Instagram friend who reads my blog telling me about Tissington, which isn't very far away from an area we visited. When we returned later on in the month to look at A Little More Family History, we decided to also call in at Tissington as it coincided with their well dressing festival.

Tissington is a village in the Derbyshire Dales. At the heart of the village is Tissington Hall, a Jacobean building and seat of the FitzHerberts.

It's a pretty village with a population of around 150.

There's some beautiful cottages in the village.

It was quite late when we arrived, after 5pm, but it was the best part of the day, the sun had decided to shine, and there were plenty of people about with the same idea as us, they'd come to see the well dressings.

Tissington has six wells which are decorated for a week each year with pictures formed by pressing flower petals into a clay substrate. There are different theories as to why the tradition exists, one theory is that it dates back to 1348, just after the black death when all in the village escaped, even though those from villages around them were ravaged by the disease. They put their good fortune down to the purity of the water in the wells and began to decorate them in thanksgiving.

I'm sure you'll agree that the pictures are stunning. When you consider how many individual flower petals are used to make each one, it must take a long time and a lot of effort, but definitely worth it for the end results.

There were a couple of refreshment tents on the verges but, unfortunately, they were closed. We'd had a long day and could have done with a cup of tea and a slice of cake before our drive home and there were still plenty of people milling around the village, certainly enough to make keeping the refreshments flowing worthwhile, especially when all the money raised is going towards village projects and charities.

As we walked back through the village to get back to the car we were aware of a man in front of us picking up litter. He turned into a gate which led into the Hall and as we passed a different gate there were a number of dogs, including a cute Pekingese, some Dachshunds and a Labrador, barking at Archie as we passed. The man came and ushered the dogs back inside and after watching Countryfile on catchup from the 26th of May after we'd visited Tissington, I now realise this was Sir Richard FitzHerbert, 9th Baronet. He's certainly a hands on landowner.

We really enjoyed our visit to Tissington and the area is absolutely beautiful. Another place I'm sure we'll return to in the future as we seem to have missed out on a lot of the village visiting after hours, as it were. If you can still find Countryfile on catch up from the 26th of May I'd definitely recommend it, very interesting, and if you're in the area, do visit, though you'll have to wait to see the well dressings until next year now.