A COUPLE of weeks ago, Looking Back featured a 1950s picture of St Cuthbert's Well, near Scorton, and asked if anyone knew anything about it.

Peter Edwards got in touch. He used to be landlord of St Cuthbert's Inn, which was in front of the well, and has an old, small book about wells of North Yorkshire.

Actually, neither well nor inn are fully in Scorton – they are about a third of a mile north in a little huddle of houses which grew up around Scorton station.

The booklet says that St Cuthbert was a well known dowser, and on his travels he reputedly discovered this healthy little spring. A monastery dedicated to him grew up near it, although there is nothing but a local fairytale to prove this – however, there is an ancient lost village at nearby Uckerby.

By medieval times, the well was noted for its efficacious treatment of cutaneous diseases and rheumatism. It is of a keyhole design, so pilgrims could walk down a few stone steps to bathe in the circular waterhole, although it looks as if it would have been a bit of a squeeze.

Another source suggests that the popularity of the well peaked at the dawn of the railway age. The nine-mile long Richmond branchline opened on September 10, 1864. It curved off the East Coast Main Line at Dalton-on-Tees, and called at three intermediate stations – Moulton (actually closest to the village of North Cowton), Scorton (a third-of-a-mile away from the village of Scorton), and Catterick Bridge (now beneath a light industrial estate having been being badly damaged in an ammunition explosion in 1944) – before it terminated at George Townsend Andrews' splendid Richmond station.

The new branchlines gave people the opportunity to explore their locality like never before – and what better daytrip could there be from a place like Stockton or Darlington than to rattle out to Scorton, take a drop of St Cuthbert’s water, then a couple more drops of the falling down water in St Cuthbert’s Inn before merrily catching the train home?

The booklet says that "within living memory", local people would drink the well's water and patients in Scorton hospital would be prescribed it.

In recent years, drinking out of a hole in the ground has fallen, understandably, out of fashion. Alterations to the nearby beck caused the water level in the well to drop, and its timber and slate housing fell into disrepair. However, it was restored in 2000 – the year in which St Cuthbert's Inn closed, even though early in the 1990s, under Peter's stewardship, it had become so noted for its food that it was praised by the New York Times.

It is now a private residence, like Scorton station, which ceased its connection with the railway when the Richmond line closed on March 3, 1969.