60 TIDESWELL AND TIDESLOW. 



The. earliest reference to this peculiar feature of the well 

 yet found recorded, is that made by T. Risdon, in his Survey 

 of Devon, for which he collected the materials between the 

 years 1605 and 1630, although the work was not printed until 

 1 7 14. The parish of East Budleigh in that county was origin- 

 ally one of the royal manors (Domesday), but in the twelfth 

 century it was divided into five sub-manors, of which a place 

 called Tidwell was one, and of this Risdon remarks : " Here is 

 a pond or pool maintained by springs, which continually welm 

 and boil up, not unlike that wonderful well in Darbyshire which 

 ebbeth and floweth by just Tides, and hath given name to 

 Tideswell, a Market Town of no mean Account." (II. 83-4.) 



Of this sub-manor the Rev. Dr. Oliver notes, " Tideswell, i.e., 

 Tide-well."* This alone disproves the assertion made by Mr. 

 Addy, that " the story about the tides of an ebbing well appears 

 to have been invented by Charles Cotton," born in 1630 (10th j. 

 92). 



The Tideswell spring is thus alluded to by J. Martin in his 

 account of A Journey to the Peak of Derbyshire, printed in 

 the Philosophical Transactions of 1729, who says : " An ebbing 

 and flowing well is far from being regular, as some have 

 pretended. It is very seldom seen by the neighbours them- 

 selves ; and, for my part, I waited a good while to no purpose. 

 And so I shall pass it over in silence " (25). 



In The Natural History of England (1759-63), by B. Martin, 

 is this notice: "What renders this place (Tideswell) most 

 remarkable, and from whence it takes its name, is a Spring or 

 Well that ebbs and flows " (ii., 234). Some authors have 

 confused this intermitting spring with one in the vicinity of 

 Barmoor Clough, often termed the " Sparrow Pit ebbing and 

 flowing well," situated from 5^ to 6 miles from Tideswell, on the 

 side of the road leading to Chapel-en-le-Frith. It is the one 

 recorded by T. Hobbes (1588-1679) in his De Mirabilis Pecci, 

 published in 1636 (in Latin — an English translation was issued 



* Monasticon Dicec. Exon. 1846, 252. 



