Not that sort of spring, and a badger with a better job than Hubert

24 September 2026

Welcome to issue 44 of Tales from the Chase, a fortnightly publication exploring the landscapes, folklore, hidden histories and strange corners of Cranborne Chase. Including odd tales. Mildly strange goings-on. Definitely strange, occasionally amusing, and always assembled with care — delivered straight to your inbox every other Thursday. Was this email forwarded to you? You can sign up for free by clicking below!

Back again, brave wanderers

Hubert turns his attention to the parish of Fontmell Magna and has not one, but two strange encounters. He may have found himself a new job, but we'll have to wait and see.

Isla, meanwhile, has found a tale that tells the origins of the seven springs of Fontmell, involving Aelwyn and the mythic smith known as Gallows Thane.

Speaking of Aelwyn, Hubert runs into her for the first time since April; and the two of them pass the time arguing about whether there are, in fact, seven springs at all.

So draw near to the hearth, unseal your finest brew, and brace yourselves. Once more we dive headfirst into the mysterious world of the Chase.

The Seven Springs

Compiled by Isla Cobb from local sources, oral accounts and the odd note found in the margins of old notebooks.

The following account was compiled from fragments of local oral tradition, antiquarian notes, and several versions of a story concerning Aelwyn and the creation of the Seven Springs.

The versions differ considerably.

For example, in some, there are seven springs. In others, there are nine, although nobody can explain what happened to the additional two. It's generally accepted that there are seven springs feeding the ponds and Collyer's Brook at Springhead today, though I have not seen them.

Other differences are that Gallows Thane the smith is usually described as a dwarf, although some versions say he's a giant. And the springs themselves acquire different names and characteristics ,according to the teller.

The version below is the most coherent reconstruction I have been able to make.

Whether it is ancient folklore, a much later elaboration of older traditions, or somebody having a very productive evening with a bottle of cider remains, as ever, open to interpretation.

aelwyn, the smith and the springs

Long ago, when the world was newly born, the hill above Fontwell lay in an endless sleep. One day Aelwyn, the spirit of the Chase, wandered down through the mist, her feet leaving no trace in the cold silver dew that lay across the grassy slope.

She looked upon the slope and thought a stream should grace it, to bring life to the Chase. She did not have the skill to make the water flow from the chalk herself, so she sought Gallows Thane, a dwarven smith who dwelt in the deep roots of the world. He was a master who could bend the fabric of the earth to his will.

For seven centuries, Thane had served in the twilight court of the Unseen Queen, completing impossible commissions that earned him legendary renown, such as the Crown of Yesterday, a circlet forged from frozen starlight, allowing the Queen to walk through a day that had already passed.

Aelwyn found him in his cavern deep in the chalk and asked for his help. None can say what bargain they struck that day, but Thane shouldered his hammer, cast from the core of a fallen star and etched with runes, and followed her to the hillside at Fontwell.

At Aelwyn’s word, the smith raised his hammer and struck the chalk seven times, once in turn in each of seven spots she indicated.

The first strike shattered the surface with the sharp crack of thunder. From the fissure leapt the Spring of Dawn, cold, pale, and bubbling with the breath of young leaves.

The second strike vibrated deep into the bedrock. Out poured the Spring of Echoes, humming with the rich, metallic ringing of Thane’s own anvil far below.

The third strike bit into a heart of flint, sending bright sparks into the air. From it bubbled the Spring of Ember, warm and glowing with the gold of trapped sunsets.

The fourth strike cleaved a dark, hollow vein, unleashing the Spring of Shadows, quiet water where the secrets of the chalk could lie unwatched.

The fifth strike swung wild and heavy, and the Spring of Currents surged forth, wild and swift, rushing down the slope.

The sixth strike was measured and flat, smoothing the chalk beneath. Water welled up to form the Spring of Mirrors, still as polished glass, reflecting the hidden dreams of any who peered inside.

The seventh strike was soft, reverberating gently through the hill. From this final blow welled the Spring of Solace, a slow flow capable of washing away the heaviest grief.

Aelwyn cast her mist into the seven springs, infusing the waters with life and light. The dry valley awoke, and Gallows Thane sat upon his hammer, watching the waters of the seven springs join and begin their endless song down the valley.

Aelwyn knelt at the water's edge and looked upon what she and the smith had made. She dipped her hand into the current. Then she walked away up the hill towards the sunrise.

In the long years that followed, those who dwelt in the shadow of the hill came to know the springs and learned which water answered which need.

Those who could not sleep sought the Spring of Dawn, and drank until the young green taste of it settled their thoughts and closed their eyes. Those who had lost something sat by the Spring of Echoes, listening for where it might be found. The Spring of Ember was kept for the cold months, and for cold hearts, its water warmed the body long after the fire had gone out. None spoke openly of what they sought at the Spring of Shadows, only that they came at dusk, and left before dawn. Brides and thieves alike trusted the Spring of Currents to carry off what they no longer wished to keep. The Spring of Mirrors was visited but once by most; those brave enough to look twice were rarer still, and rarer again were those who liked what they saw. And when grief grew too heavy to carry alone, it was the Spring of Solace people would visit.

It is said that Aelwyn returns still, on mornings when the mist sits heavy in the valley, to walk the banks of Springhead and count the seven voices, making certain none has fallen silent. Should you rise early enough, and stand quiet enough, you may see her footsteps in the dew and know that Aelwyn has come back to listen to her springs.

isla's Commentary

There is rather more substance beneath this particular piece of folklore than might first appear.

There are, by local accounts, seven springs on the land at Fontmell Magna that feed Collyer's Brook. The springs themselves lie on private land, so I have not inspected them personally, and I would be grateful to anyone who has for confirmation that there are, in fact, seven rather than six, eight, or some other number, depending on how exactly one defines a spring.

The number seven has considerable folkloric currency. Seven wells, seven hills, seven sisters, seven brothers: it turns up repeatedly in European tradition.

There is also a recurring association between springs and supernatural beings. Water emerging from chalk has always invited explanation. Springs become thresholds, gifts, wounds in the earth, places of healing and, occasionally, places where one should avoid looking too closely into the water.

Also significant is the presence of Aelwyn.

Within the wider mythology of the Chase, Aelwyn is not simply a generic water or woodland spirit. She is the guardian spirit of Cranborne Chase itself. Her concern in this story is therefore entirely consistent with her character. She sees a part of the Chase that lacks water and seeks to remedy it.

She cannot make the springs herself. She has the authority of the land, but Gallows Thane possesses the craft to alter it. Their partnership therefore has a rather satisfying logic: Aelwyn knows what the Chase needs; Thane can help to make it happen. In Issue 33 we saw them working together to create a shield of bluebells to protect the Chase from the Grey King.

It also gives Thane rather more importance than the usual magical labourer who turns up, does the necessary hammering and leaves.

He is a craftsman of the deep earth, a being whose skill is sufficiently remarkable to have earned a place at the court of the Unseen Queen. His hammer does not merely break the chalk. Each blow produces a different quality of water, and each spring acquires its own character.

In older folklore, craftsmen who work beneath the earth are rarely entirely comfortable characters. They possess knowledge other people do not have, and knowledge is seldom given away for free.

What Aelwyn actually promises Thane in return for his seven blows is unclear. I find this omission interesting.

The springs are given names, and characteristics; some say that people would visit the relevant named springs when they needed solace, or healing, or to see their hidden dreams; or they would take the water from specific springs to make medicines and potions for specific purposes tied to their character.

The image that is the most important is that of Aelwyn's mist entering the newly made springs, followed by the awakening of the valley. In this reading, Thane makes the water flow, but Aelwyn makes it alive.

This tale is folklore doing what it does best: taking a physical landscape and bestowing its features with history, personality, and purpose.

There is another small detail worth noticing. The springs do not remain separate. Their waters join and become Collyers Brook, flowing onward through the landscape (albeit away from the Chase) and becoming an important source of water and power for the creatures and people of the area.

Whether this tale is truly ancient is far harder to establish. I have found no evidence that the full account of Aelwyn, Gallows Thane, and the seven springs survives as a piece of ancient lore with an unbroken lineage. It may well be a modern elaboration woven around an older understanding of the landscape, or a stitching together of fragmented local tales. Or, as so often happens with folklore, several minds may simply have added a little imagination over time.

That doesn't make it false or less interesting. But I would still love to know: are there definitely seven?

A parish by parish tour of the Chase

fontmell magna

FONTMELL MAGNA

Ah, Fontmell Magna. "Spring by the bare hill", from the ancient Brythonic words for spring and bare hill, plus Magna, "great" or "large" from the Latin, added later presumably to distinguish it from Fontmell Parva, which is a few miles away, in a different parish.

The Latin scholars amongst you will note that, according to its suffix, this other Fontmell is small. Perhaps Fontmell Parva has other qualities. Aggression, perhaps.

Around 740 people live in the parish of Fontmell Magna, although only a tiny number have the distinction of living within the Chase. The Chase occupies only the eastern part of the parish, and excludes the actual village itself. I shall therefore be ignoring the village.

This is not laziness. It is editorial judgement. This publication concerns the Chase and nothing but the Chase. The boundary is where it is. I wish the village well in dealing with whatever happens to be lurking over there. I have no intention of being dragged into it.

Most notable for: Seven springs

At Springhead, seven springs emerge where the chalk downs meet the greensand. They fill a pond or three, feed Collyer's Brook, and have been attracting people to this particular patch of the Chase for rather a long time.

Mesolithic worked flints found in the wider area date from roughly 6500–4000 BC. There is also evidence of Bronze Age occupation, including a barrow up on the hill, plus Iron Age earthworks. Roman coins have been found nearby. So people have been aware of the springs and have been using the water for thousands of years.

Springhead was the site of one of Fontmell's three mills mentioned in the Domesday book, and subsequently became a fulling mill, then a corn mill. After that the building was used for making bottle tops, then for cheese making. In the twentieth century it became a private residence, and a nucleus for a widely extending farm and forestry operation as well as a centre for the arts and revival of traditional cultures.

The fact that there are supposedly seven springs has encouraged a certain amount of folklore, given that seven is a particularly useful number for supernatural purposes.

I have no idea why.

The Springhead grounds contain around fifteen acres of habitats, with kingfishers, little egrets, brown trout, otters and occasional water voles among the recorded wildlife. It is now cared for by the Springhead Trust, which preserves the historic buildings, gardens, and habitats, while running educational, environmental and cultural projects. An admirable undertaking. Also, faintly suspicious.

Also notable

The woman on the water

As there's no public access around the springs, I went to look at the main pond on Collyer's Brook below Springhead, where a public footpath passes by. And to try to answer a question Isla had put to me "as I was going to be in the area". There's a bin, a bench, an information board, and a bridge to the other side. The air was heavy with the smell of wet chalk, crushed mint, and aggressive dampness. Some swans and ducks drifted aimlessly about on the pond, and the water rushed over a weir and on towards the village.

Above the surface of the pond hung a patch of mist that had no business being there, given that everywhere else was bathed in perfectly respectable afternoon sun. It hovered, stubbornly stationary, directly over the water.

"You again," said a voice from inside the cloud. It sounded disappointed and faintly irritated.

"I am," I said, halting on the bridge and adjusting my coat. "And I see you're still refusing to conform to the laws of local meteorology."

The mist coalesced, shifting from a vague grey smudge into the tall, unsettlingly vertical shape of Aelwyn. Her dress drifted softly to the left, despite a mild breeze blowing firmly to the right. Her eyes lit up through the fog like LED headlights.

"You are in the presence of the work of the Deep Earth, mortal," she said, her voice echoing. "The craftsman’s hammer has struck. The seven veins are opened. The water flows."

"It certainly does," I replied, peering past her over the reeds. "Though calling them 'seven distinct springs' feels like a bit of a stretch. I suspect at least two of them look remarkably like puddles, and one's probably just a wet patch near a badger sett."

Aelwyn tilted her head, her features twitching. "They are the Seven Sisters of the Chalk. Each brings a different spirit to the brook. One brings clarity, one brings solace, one brings the memory of the deep stone—"

"And one smells faintly of sheep dip," I interjected, pulling out my notebook. "Look, I’m just trying to verify the numbers. A woman named Isla is writing something on all this, and if I go back and tell her I couldn't count past five because the mist was acting up, I'll never hear the end of it."

The temperature around the pond plummeted instantly. Breath bloomed in front of my face in white clouds.

"Isla measures the bones of the world with tiny rules," Aelwyn hissed, stepping forward. She didn't walk so much as slide across the surface of the pond, swans and ducks parting before her. "She seeks the number, but she misses the song. Gallows Thane drove his iron into the hill. He bled the rock so the Chase might drink."

"Yes, Thane," I said, standing my ground, though my ankles were rapidly going numb. "Splendid chap. Very industrious with a sledgehammer. But did he make seven? Because if three of them merge ten yards downstream, local maps are going to classify it as a single tributary, regardless of how much deep-earth poetry you attach to it."

Her bright blue eyes rolled so hard I half-expected to hear them click. She let out a long, shuddering sigh that sounded like water rushing down a plughole.

"You have no poetry in you, mortal," she murmured, her edges already beginning to fray back into fog. "You gaze upon a miracle and complain about the mud."

"I am complaining about the damp," I corrected. "There's a distinct difference."

"Count them or do not," her voice echoed, now coming from everywhere and nowhere as the mist began to thin. "The seven flow eternally."

With a final, condescending puff of vapour that smelled faintly of watercress, she vanished. A duck quacked. I wrote down "probably seven - unverified" and put my notebook away.

Fontmell Down Nature Reserve is 63 hectares of ancient chalk grassland, which is a slightly unpromising description of somewhere containing nine species of orchid, the rare early gentian and around thirty-five species of butterfly.

The early gentian is particularly worth noticing, if you can find it. You'll have to come in May or early June, when it flowers. It is small, rare and very easy to walk past, which makes it an exemplary Chase plant. It has no interest in being impressive.

There are also, depending on who you ask, other things living in the scrub. Nothing large, nothing to worry about if you're careful. Someone maintains he once left an offering of blackberries at the edge of a patch of gorse and found, some days later, a single slightly better blackberry in the same spot, which he regards as conclusive.

The man with the leather satchel. Whilst strolling across the higher part of the down I came across a man lying in the scrub, holding a leather satchel to his chest. He stood up and asked me whether I'd come about the interview. I said no.

He looked faintly disappointed but said that was fine, then asked me three questions.

"Where do you see yourself, professionally, in relation to the badger?" He indicated a nearby badger, down the slope to my left. It looked guilty. I gave it that look I usually reserve for when I find a dead slug in a bowl of soup.

"Superior, I'd expect", I replied.

"Have you ever, even once, disappointed a gate?"

"I've never met a gate that's capable of existential drama."

"OK...now, describe, without gesturing, the shape of Tuesday".

"No".

He opened his satchel and peered in. There was a faint rustle, a tinkle of small bells, followed by urgent and furtive whispering. I caught a waft of extinguished candles and old socks. The badger looked nervous. The man closed the satchel.

"Thanks for coming. We'll be in touch".

He shook my hand, and set off downhill at a brisk pace, badger following behind.

I sighed and supposed I should consider myself fortunate. I walked in the opposite direction. I'd already wasted five minutes of daylight on a fugitive lunatic and a badger with a better job than me, no point hanging about.

Also notable: Jerry’s Hole, which is apparently part of the Nature Reserve. I have no information as to who Jerry was, why he had a hole, or whether he approved of the arrangement. I made enquiries, which were not welcomed.

I did find that half of this name can be explained to my satisfaction, but the other half cannot, and I have decided to take it personally.

Hole, in Dorset, rarely means a hole. It usually means a hollow. A combe. A fold in the chalk where the ground goes down without anyone having had to dig it. Jerry's Hole is a steep combe on the down, and therefore geomorphologically it is entirely accounted for.

Jerry, though, is not. Is there or was there a Jerry? I have found no record of a Jerry, nothing whatsoever to suggest that a Jerry was ever present. Maybe Jerry is a secret so catastrophic that he is erased from local memory and only therapy could bring him back. However, I am increasingly convinced Jerry was made up purely to give me something to resent on a Tuesday afternoon.

If you know something, keep it to yourself and spare me the reminder of my failure. I don’t wish to hear it.

On leaving

On leaving Fontmell Magna, take one last look west from the higher ground.

You will see the Blackmore Vale stretching out, and somewhere below the water will be finding its way out of the chalk.

If you hear running water, keep moving. Fontmell Down has been tricking people about its springs since the Bronze Age, and frankly, you’ve already given enough of your day to local mythology.

NEXT TIME: FOVANT

Prepare to be underwhelmed.

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