Well O'Spa

It has been destroyed by water spates from local burns or streams and moved to a new and safer site on several occasions.

[1] The ferrous mineral quality of the water is due to a geological feature in the NE of Scotland and Aberdeen.

[7] It now lies in a peaceful square overlooked by a modern car park and an elegant granite building.

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Aberdeen[8] had a lively trading relationship with Europe – especially "The Low Countries".

A contemporary account relates the benefits of the mineral water: [..] the solicitous desire of some diseased citizens who did find renewed experiences of its powerful virtues in the cure of tormenting gravels, deadly colicks and desperate hydropsies [..] In his application to the Town Council, which was readily agreed to, Skene wrote a letter referring to Jamesone[11] the painter to attract the attention of Council members.

Painted (as I guess) with its master’s hand…[..]In it, he recalls an earlier spate that had destroyed the well : [..] …the well had been adorned with a long wyde stone which conveyed the waters of the spring with the purtraicture of six Apolsles hewen upon either side thereof which being very old and worne, a virtuous citizen George Jamesone .. did built it of new and put a Tomb of hewen stone over it .. [however] a violent torrent of waters falling into that stream running by it did suddenly overturn it and buried the spring in the ruins so much of the hill having fallen therewith [..] The stream was the Den (burn) or the Gilcomston Burn.

Skene sums up the benefits of the well thus: [..] We have a choice Medicinall Spring, called the Well of Spa, at Woolmanhill, built with hewn ston, very specific for the Gout, Gravell, Collick and Hydripsie, as the late famous Dr. William Barclay, physician did learnedly describe in 1615 … to which every person concerned to know its vertues and how to use the same, is referred….[..

It has been used by generations of Aberdonians such as the eminent seventeenth century portrait painter George Jamesone, known as the Scottish van Dyck.

[13] It was firmly believed in his time that the chalybeate properties of the waters cured this and many other conditions – including infertility.

In Lys Wyness's recent book on the Wells of Bon-Accord she provides both a Latin and a modern English translation.

First, in 1670 the Horace text was altered by Alexander Skene of Newtyle the sponsor of the renovation so that an inscription better fitted a mineral well.

Based on a reliable text of Horace's works, the sixth ode "AD Romanos", reads: (stanza 5) "…fecunda culpae saecula nuptias; primum inquinavere et genus et domos; hoc fonte derivate clades; in patriam populumque fluxit….".

Roughly translated as : "..many sinful generations have polluted marriage, the family and the home; resulting in the troubles now experienced by Rome and its citizens..".

Generations prolific in sin polluted; first marriage, family and home; From this source streamed the troubles; which have flowed over our land and its people."

A small change in a Latin quotation in 1670 has thus led to the many misleading translations and claims for mineral waters of the Well o’Spa.

This leads to a statement about the past referring to what Horace considers a disaster being transformed into a wish for continuing well-being.

In 1976, the well was moved again to its current site on Skene Street close to a municipal car park.