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The Well
At the roadside, near St. Peter’s Church, in the
tiny but ancient parish of Ridley, stands a mute testimony to a
150 years old tragedy. It is Bowdler’s Well which was sunk by
the Rector of Ridley, the Rev. Thomas Bowdler, after he and his
wife had lost four young children, who were taken ill after
drinking stagnant water.
It is said locally that the well was 350 feet deep,
but this may be an exaggeration. At any rate, the parishioners of
Ridley were assured of fresh water until modern plumbing made the
well unnecessary and it was concreted over. The super structure
with a thatched roof was added by Mr Raoul H. Foa when he acquired
the Holywell Park Estate in 1902.
The Rector was the nephew of Dr Thomas Bowdler
(1754-1825) the philanthropist, who added a new word to the
English language – "bowdlerize". In 1818, Dr
BOWLDER published his "Family Shakespeare", a
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work in ten volumes in which he has
effectively censored all words and expressions that he considered
unfit to be read aloud in a family. He was vigorously attacked by
the critics and the word "bowdlerize" which was coined
at the time, came to be associated with false squeamishness. Dr
Thomas Bowdler was living in Ash for a time, but there is no
record to tell us which house he occupied.
His nephew, the Rector of Ridley, helped him while he
was preparing his expurgated Shakespeare and his similarly treated
version of Gibbons "Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire" – so the old well at Ridley, the cover of which was
re-thatched in 1954, the bi-centenary year of Dr Bowdler, takes us
quite a long way back into history.
The Rev. T. Bowdler, who had charge of the adjoining
parish of Ash and also of Addington, as well as Ridley, later
became Rector of Sydenham and a Prebendary of St. Paul's
Cathedral.
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