There are places we visit once and remember.
And then there are places that seem to call us back.
For me, Glastonbury has become the latter.
Since my first experience at the White Spring at Easter 2026, the waters beneath Glastonbury Tor have woven themselves quietly into the story of House of Bridie. We have returned again and again — sometimes deliberately, sometimes through circumstances that seemed almost to arrange themselves around us.
Only recently, after learning more about the history beneath the Tor, have I begun to wonder whether there is something much older within this landscape that explains why people have been drawn to these waters for generations.
Because beneath Glastonbury Tor, two extraordinary springs emerge remarkably close to one another.
One runs red.
The other runs white.
And between them lies a landscape in which geology, pilgrimage, Christianity, Celtic tradition, Avalon and Brigid have become intertwined.
The entrance to the White Spring, beneath Glastonbury Tor.
Two Waters Beneath the Tor
The two springs emerge near the foot of Glastonbury Tor, yet their waters are strikingly different.
Chalice Well is traditionally known as the Red Spring or Blood Spring because its water contains iron, leaving the unmistakable rusty-red deposits visible throughout the gardens.
Across Wellhouse Lane flows the White Spring, whose calcium-rich water leaves pale mineral deposits.
The contrast is not simply folklore.
Geological research has examined the complex system of springs around the Tor. The Chalice Well and White Spring arise from the geology surrounding the Pennard Sands, although their underground routes and mineral composition differ. Research into the White Spring has found that several spring flows actually combine before entering its Victorian reservoir.
Two waters.
Two mineral signatures.
Emerging almost side by side beneath the same extraordinary hill.
It isn't difficult to understand why generations of people have seen symbolism in them.
The White Spring flowing through the stone pools beneath the Tor.
The Red Spring and the White Spring
Over time, spiritual traditions surrounding Glastonbury have interpreted the two waters as complementary opposites — red and white, iron and calcium, masculine and feminine, blood and milk.
Those interpretations belong to spiritual and esoteric tradition rather than archaeology, but the physical phenomenon beneath them is real.
The Red Spring at Chalice Well is iron-rich. The Chalice Well Trust says more than 100,000 litres of water flow from it each day at a remarkably constant temperature of around 11°C.
The White Spring has a completely different character.
Its water is calcium-rich, and today it flows within and around the extraordinary Victorian Well House that has become the White Spring Temple. The building contains three great vaulted chambers, filled with the constant sound of moving water and usually illuminated only by candles.
Anyone who has stepped inside will understand why describing it merely as a "spring" doesn't quite capture it.
You descend from daylight into darkness.
You hear the water before your eyes adjust.
Candles flicker against stone.
Water moves continuously through the pools.
There is something elemental about it.
Inside the White Spring Temple, where the waters flow continuously through the candlelit Victorian well house.
A Living Tradition of Collecting the Water
During our stay in Glastonbury, one of the things that struck me most was how completely ordinary collecting the water still is.
Early in the morning we would go down with our bottles and containers to fill them.
And we were rarely alone.
People arrived carrying everything imaginable — small drinking bottles, glass bottles, large containers, babies bottles, dog bowls and enormous water carriers.
Some were visitors.
Some seemed to be locals simply collecting their water.
And then they would disappear again, carrying the spring home with them.
Collecting water beneath the Tor — something we watched many people doing throughout our stay.
For several days, this became part of our own morning rhythm.
We would wake at Bramble Cottage and walk down early, often around seven or eight in the morning, to collect fresh water.
And we drank it every day.
I have written previously about something curious I noticed personally while drinking the Glastonbury water: a copper ring I wear normally leaves a green mark on my skin. While I was drinking the spring water regularly, the staining disappeared.
Several weeks after our supply ran out, it gradually returned.
I can't claim a medical explanation for that, and I don't think we need one.
It was simply something I observed in my own body — and something that made me even more curious about the mineral composition of these extraordinary waters.
Why Are the Waters Called Healing?
The reputation of Glastonbury's waters as healing waters stretches back centuries, although we need to separate tradition from modern medical evidence.
Chalice Well was promoted particularly strongly as a healing spring during the eighteenth century. In 1751 its waters became celebrated as a treatment for numerous ailments and a pump room and baths subsequently opened.
Modern geological research, however, does not support claims that the water is a medical cure.
And perhaps that distinction matters.
"Healing" has never meant only medicine.
For countless pilgrims, healing might mean sitting beside running water after grief.
It might mean prayer.
It might mean returning to nature.
It might mean leaving an offering, lighting a candle, immersing tired feet in cold water or simply becoming quiet enough to hear yourself again.
That kind of healing is much harder to measure.
Brigid Upon the Tor
One of my favourite discoveries came not beneath the Tor, but at its summit.
St Michael's Tower is all that remains of a medieval church. An earlier church was destroyed by an earthquake in 1275, and the surviving structure dates largely from the fourteenth century.
And set into the ancient stone is a small carving.
St Bridget milking a cow.
The National Trust itself identifies the carving as St Bridget.
I hadn't fully appreciated the significance of this when Nick and I stood beneath it.
Nick and I beneath St Michael's Tower on Glastonbury Tor. Above us in the medieval stone is a carving identified as St Bridget milking a cow.
Looking at this photograph now feels rather different.
Here we were, having travelled repeatedly to Glastonbury because of a journey that had become inseparable from Brigid, standing directly beneath her image on one of Britain's most famous sacred hills.
Sometimes you discover the meaning of a photograph only afterwards.
Brigid, Mary and the Christ Child
There is another beautiful strand to Brigid's story which helps explain why her presence can sit so naturally within a landscape more commonly associated with Mary, Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea.
In Gaelic Christian folklore, Bride became known as Muime Chrìost — the Foster-Mother of Christ.
These aren't biblical accounts and shouldn't be read as literal history. Brigid of Kildare lived approximately five centuries after the birth of Jesus.
But folklore doesn't always obey chronology.
In traditions recorded in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, Bride is transported into the Nativity story.
One tradition places her as a servant at the inn in Bethlehem. She encounters Mary and Joseph and eventually helps Mary during the birth, receiving the newborn Christ into her arms.
In other traditions she becomes Mary's companion, protector and the child's foster-mother.
These stories became so deeply embedded that traditional Gaelic prayers referred lovingly to Bride as Christ's foster-mother.
There are even later traditions connecting Brigid with candles and Mary — another extraordinary echo for a saint whose symbolism is already inseparable from sacred flame.
Mary.
Water.
Birth.
Brigid.
Fire.
Perhaps their stories were never as separate as we sometimes imagine.
Brigid at Chalice Well
That connection makes our visit to Chalice Well Gardens feel particularly meaningful.
Glastonbury tradition strongly associates Chalice Well with Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Grail. The iron-rich water became known as the Blood Spring, its red colouring lending itself naturally to Christian symbolism surrounding the blood of Christ. Historic England records the site's traditional association with the Grail and Joseph of Arimathea.
But there is a quieter Brigid connection here too.
In 1906 a remarkable glass vessel now known as the Blue Bowl was recovered from a well at Beckery — the area associated with Bride's Mound and Bride's Well.
The story surrounding its burial and rediscovery is part history and part the extraordinary spiritual experimentation taking place in Glastonbury at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Today the bowl is held in the care of Chalice Well.
Brigid traditions have continued to move between these Glastonbury sacred places. Records from Friends of Bride's Mound describe Imbolc celebrations coordinated between Bride's Mound, the White Spring and Chalice Well, and also record the Brigid/Avalon perpetual flame being carried into Chalice Well Gardens.
So when we lit our own flame for Bridie there, we weren't consciously reenacting a documented tradition.
But unknowingly, we were stepping into one.
Lighting a flame for Bridie in Chalice Well Gardens on the Lions Gate Portal 8.8.26.
An offering made with love xx
Bride, Mother and Child
Mother and child in Chalice Well Gardens — an image that felt especially beautiful after discovering the old traditions linking Bridie with Mary and the Christ Child.
Standing here now, knowing the old Gaelic stories of Bride as the helper of Mary and foster-mother of Christ, brings another layer to this place for me.
Not because I believe we have to choose one religious interpretation over another.
Quite the opposite.
The thing I increasingly love about Brigid is her ability to stand at thresholds.
Goddess and saint.
Fire and water.
Pagan and Christian.
Ireland and Britain.
Ancient tradition and living spirituality.
Perhaps that is why she seems so at home in Glastonbury.
The Dragon Beneath the Tor
And then there is another, much more esoteric Glastonbury tradition.
The article that prompted me to investigate all of this described the Tor as a Dragon Lair and a place of initiation, alchemy and transformation.
Some modern spiritual traditions describe the Tor's terraces as a seven-level labyrinth or "Spiral Castle". Others associate the hill with the Michael and Mary energy lines, Avalon, dragons and the meeting of masculine and feminine energies.
These ideas are fascinating.
But their origins need to be distinguished from established archaeology.
The National Trust confirms that the Tor's distinctive terraces are real — but their purpose remains unknown. Suggestions have ranged from agricultural terraces to some form of sacred or pilgrim labyrinth. There simply isn't enough evidence to know.
And perhaps mystery is allowed to remain mystery.
What we do know is that people have occupied and worshipped upon this hill for a very long time. Archaeology has uncovered evidence of early medieval monastic occupation, rock-cut cells, a possible wooden church and later successive stone churches.
Around those facts grew Avalon.
Gwyn ap Nudd.
Arthur.
The Grail.
Dragons.
The Otherworld.
Christian pilgrimage.
Goddess spirituality.
And eventually the modern spiritual community that surrounds Glastonbury today.
People keep placing new stories upon the hill.
Yet somehow the Tor remains itself beneath them all.
Fire Above, Water Below
Perhaps this is the image I am left with most strongly.
At the bottom of the Tor flow two waters.
Red and white.
At its summit stands St Michael's Tower.
And carved into that tower is Brigid.
Fire above.
Water below.
Those happen to be the two elements that have followed Brigid throughout my own journey.
Beneath the medieval carving of St Bridget on St Michael's Tower.
Maybe that is one reason we keep being called back here.
Not because I need to prove that an invisible force is pulling us towards Glastonbury.
But because sometimes a landscape speaks through its stories, its history and the experiences we accumulate within it.
And every time we return, another piece seems to reveal itself.
Carrying the Waters Home
The waters we collect in Glastonbury don't remain there.
Small amounts of the sacred waters from the White Spring and Chalice Well have become part of the story of House of Bridie, alongside waters gathered from Brigid's wells in Kildare.
For me, they are not simply ingredients.
They are pieces of pilgrimage.
They carry memories of early mornings beneath the Tor, bottles being filled beside strangers, candlelight inside the White Spring, flowers beside Chalice Well and the strange realisation that a medieval image of Brigid had been looking down from the Tor while we stood beneath her.
The living waters beneath Glastonbury Tor.
And perhaps that is what sacred water has always been about.
Not magic in a bottle.
Not promises of miracles.
But relationship.
With land.
With memory.
With those who came before us.
And with something that, however we choose to name it, continues to call us back.
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