page_title: River Irvine
section_title: Holy waters and mineral springs
hierarchical_section_title: River Irvine / Holy waters and mineral springs
caption_attribution_description: The Bloak Well near Auchentiber in Ayrshire. The building is now called Salt Well Cottage.
context_page_description: The River Irvine is a river that flows through southwest Scotland. Its watershed is on the Lanarkshire border of Ayrshire at an altitude of 810 feet above sea-level, near Loudoun Hill, Drumclog, and 7 miles SW by W of Strathaven. It flows 29 ¹⁄₂ mi westward, dividing the old district of Cunninghame from that of Kyle, until it reaches the sea via Irvine Harbour in the form of the Firth of Clyde, and flows into Irvine Bay by the town of Irvine. It has many tributaries, some of which form parish, district and other boundaries.
context_section_description: The Burnanne or Burnawn joins the Irvine at Galston. It is named after St Anne, said to be the mother of the Virgin Mary. The St Anne's holy well is marked on the OS and lies above Bank wood, flowing into the Burn Anne. Maria's well lies on the Byrebank burn, in the Loudoun castle policies, which runs down near Loudoun Academy to join the Irvine.
  
  A mineral spring is recorded as being near Stewarton, North Ayrshire, called the Bloak Well. Robinson gives the Scot's word 'blout' as meaning the 'eruption of fluid'. 
   Bloak Well was first discovered in 1800, 1810, or in around 1826, by the fact that pigeons from neighbouring parishes flocked here to drink. Mr. Cunningham of Lainshaw built a handsome house over the well in 1833 and appointed a keeper to take care of it as the mineral water was of some value. The mineral well waters empty into the Glazert, which joins the Annick Water at Watermeetings near Cunninghamhead.
  The Chapel Burn rises near the Anderson Plantation in the fields below Lainshaw Mains and it is marked as a chalybeate or mineral spring on the 1911 6" OS map. Bore holes nearby suggest that the water was put to a more formal use at one time, supplying cattle troughs or possibly even for a stand pipe as mineral water was popular for its supposed curative properties. According to the opinion of the day, it could cure ‘the colic, the melancholy, and the vapours; it made the lean fat, the fat lean; it killed flat worms in the belly, loosened the clammy humours of the body, and dried the over-moist brain. The main spring here has been covered over and the water piped out to the burn, which runs down to join the Annick Water at Chapeltoun Bridge.
  In the woodland policies of Chapeltoun House is the Monk's Well (OS 1974), fountain or spring as indicated on the OS maps going back as far as 1858. Its present appearance is probably as a Victorian or Edwardian 'whimsy' or 'folly' with a large, thick sandstone 'tombstone appearance' with a slightly damaged cross carved in relief upon it and a spout through which the spring water once passed into a cast iron 'bowl'. It seems unlikely from the workmanship that this stone and cross have anything to do with the old chapel, but one possibility is that it came from over the entrance door to Laigh Chapelton as the custom was for a Templar property to have the 'cross' symbol of the order displayed in such a fashion[2]. On the other hand, it could have been made for the Chapelton (old) House to associate the building with the Christian history of the site. The stone is unusually thick and has been clearly reworked to pass a spout through it. The OS record that in the 1970s a Mr. H. Gollan of Chapeltown stated that the 'Monk's Well', was believed to have been associated with the chapel. In July 1956 the OS state that the 'Monk's Well' is a spring emerging through a stone pipe, situated in a stone-faced cutting in the hill slope, the spring water running into the Annick Water.
  The Monk's or Mack's or Maaks Well at Kilmaurs, pronounced 'Manks Well' runs into the Carmel beneath Kilmaurs Place. It is said that many years ago the local laird tried to prevent the local people from using the well. It dried up until the lord changed his mind, but has run continuously ever since. A few deaths have occurred here by drowning or by physical trauma
  Next to the Kilmaurs-Glencairn church in Kilmaurs is a patch of woodland that was once an orchard. The Tour streamlet joins the Carmel nearby and before the confluence can be found an old well, arched over, known as the Lady's Well, with never-failing, excellent and refeshingly cool water. A small wooden bridge used to run across to the Lady's Well from the church glebe side.
  Saint Inans well lies close to the river Irvine on a path running parallel to the Old Irvine Parish churchyard. It bears the date 839 AD (see photograph).
  A monastic settlement and chapel of Saint Mary at the Thurgartstone near Dunlop's Chapel Crags, is a Christian centre established to eradicate the pagan significance of the site. Monastic cells, a chapel and a graveyard are a
caption: A view of Bloak Well, now called Salt Well in 2006
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