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Mother Pugsley’s Well

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Mother Pugsley! who does not remember thy well,
With its waters so cool and so clear;
But how few can the tale of thy constancy tell,
Unto few do thy sorrows appear?

A watercolour of Mother Pugsley’s Well by Samuel Jackson, 1823
(courtesy of Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives).

“The local reader is so well acquainted with the history of this spring, which is situate on the north slope of Kingsdown, looking towards Montpelier, that I need hardly more than mention it.”

The story of Mother (or ‘Ma’ or ‘Dame’ or ‘Gammer’) Pugsley was at one time so well known that it passed into common lore. The well having been lost, the story too has faded from memory.

In 1645, at the height of the war between King and the Parliament, Bristol was held by the Royalists under Prince Rupert. Prior’s Hill Fort was at one extremity of the entrenchments surrounding the city. Cromwell and Fairfax attacked on September 10th and the fort held for three hours before it was eventually overwhelmed. No quarter was offered and the entire garrison was killed.

That and other surrounding land was the property of a young man, recently married, named Pugsley, who held a command at the fort. After the surrender of the city, he was buried with military honours in the field where he had been killed.

His widow, reputedly a young and beautiful woman, went into mourning and continued to mourn for the rest of her life, visiting his grave almost every day. She never remarried and devoted her time to charitable works and spent much of the time beside the well near where her husband was buried. She was reputed to have been especially fond of children and having had no chance to have her own, would play with them beside the well.

The well itself seems to have consisted of two stone basins or cisterns. Water from one was supposed to have contained ‘an infallible remedy for the eyes’. The other was reputed to have made a very good pot of tea.

It seems to have been a favourite place for walks, being an open meadow at the time with little of the later building. According to one writer;

Miss Marian Pease informed the writer that she has heard her mother say that when she was a very little child, about 1832/3, living at Union Street, it was a favourite place for the nurses to take “the children there.”

The field appears to have been the regular playground of children;

“They used to roll down the hill, sir, in their fun, and it did their hearts good, and sometimes the nursemaids rolled after them ; but this was not as comely or convenient a practice as that of the pretty youngsters.”

About twenty-five years after the death of Mother Pugsley, the then proprietor of the field sold it to some building speculators, who dug clay, erected a brick-kiln and sunk the foundation of several houses, part of the plan of an immense crescent. Three years later, however, they had failed to sell or complete any of the houses, and the field was restored to its original state.

In January 1845 a local meeting was held concerning the proposal to build Fremantle Square on the site which meant that free access to the well would no longer be allowed. The meeting was unsuccessful in finding money to support the right of access.

Records of the Bristol Local Board of Health for 1863 state that

“A spring at Kingsdown known as Pugsley’s Well was formerly accessible to the public but has been for several years enclosed in a garden and there is at present no access to it.”

Then in 1864:

“29 July 1864 As regards ‘Mother Pugsley’s Well’ it appears that the quantity of water is not large and that in order to render this available for the public use it would be necessary to purchase the property on which the well stands, the cost of the premises and of laying pipes for leading the water would be more than the benefit to accrue therefrom would warrant”

A compromise was the placing of a pump on the site which was recorded as still existing in 1940. The exact location of the well is now beneath the boundary wall of the gardens of two properties and so may never be recovered.


Mother Pugsley died in August 1700 after 60 years of mourning her husband. She left specific instructions as to the form she wanted her funeral to take. According to a contemporary account,

“…an old woman of the name of Pugsley died, and desired to be buried in the following manner : to be wound up in her wedding-sheet, having her wedding-shift also, and be carried on a bier to the field adjoining unto the ground commonly called the Nine Trees (by reason of such a number of elms there planted), and two maids should go before the corpse with herbs, and strew them as they went; and that the bells of Saint Nicholas church should ring as her body was carried under the gate. And she further ordered that a fiddler should play before the corpse. All which was punctually performed, to the admiration and in the view of at least ten thousand spectators.”

She also bequeathed money for a sixpenny loaf and a ninepenny loaf at Easter, and a twopenny loaf on Twelfth Day, to each of the sixteen women inhabiting St. Nicholas’ Alms-House.

Although this is the commonly accepted version there is an alternative account in a 1701 manuscript.

“1701. This year Goody Pugsley was buried in a ground beyond the nine trees in St. James’s, with a fiddle playing before her. Thousands of people beheld her: and the throng of people was so great in the street, that loaded horses, carts, and coaches, could scarce pass. She was buried on the 4th of August. People got upon the leads, and stood in galleries to behold. and looked out of their windows.

She desired Mr. Reed the minister to bury her, but he was not there, neither would the mayor suffer the city waits [musicians] to play before her, according to her desire. When the corpse came to the high cross, they threw sweet herbs among the people. There was great rudeness at her burying. She was about eighty-one years of age when she died. When she was put in the grave, without a coffin, there was somebody leaped in upon her*.

There must needs be 40,000 spectators. and many thousands were at her burying. She had no Bible nor Common Prayer Book put under her head according to her desire. …She desired that the bells should ring at her burial, which was granted. Her husband at the siege of Bristol was wounded and died, and there buried in the same ground. She bought the ground, and protested she would molest and haunt them day and night, if they would not fulfil her will. She was buried in her wedding sheet.

*The account of the consequence of this act of brutality is too disgusting for insertion.”

Some of these accounts are written much later and even contemporary accounts may be distorted. Although the general tone of writings about her is positive, according to one writer;

“In her lifetime her lips would wag and more as if she was whispering, and she was not counted a good woman. The vulgar supposed her to have been a witch, and they trampled upon her grave.”

She was laid to rest in her husband’s grave beneath the shadow of the elm trees. The spot was marked by a monumental tablet, and when building operations began near by in the middle-nineteenth century the bones of the two lovers were allegedly “found embedded in a great quantity of ashes.”

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