This is just one of those pleasantly odd little historical footnotes from days gone by, concerning the town of Oundle, England. The “Peterborough Standard,” November 21, 1930 (via Newspapers.com):
I was pleased to learn that Oundle still boasts a Drumming Well Lane, which I assume is around the now-lost site of “one Dobbs” and his well.
The history of Oundle, whose name, we are told, was spelt Undala or Undela in the tenth century, but not that it was Undalum in Bede's day, begins with the death of St. Wilfrid in 709. From that date it appears to have led the normal life of a medieval manor, usually peaceful, but with occasional disturbances, as in 1297, when the Bishop of Durham's men were assaulted and deprived of the goods which they had just purchased in the market. In the seventeenth century, that heyday of the supernatural, Oundle was remarkable for its drumming well, which was thus described:
"Here is much discourse of a strange well at Oundle in Northamptonshire: wherein has bene heard by many a kind of Druming in maner of a March for ye most part; and is said to be very Ominous, haveing bene heard heretofore, and always precedes some great accident. I wrote to the towne for an account of it, from whence I was informd of ye certaine truth of it, that it beat for about a fortnigh the ktter end of the last month and the begining of this, and in the very same maner was heard before the King's death, the Death of Crumwell, the King's coming in, the fire of London; this I had from a good hand, an inhabitant there: ye well is in the yard of one Dobbs. ..."
Drumming Well Lane... I too am pleased by that left-over, a literal origin for what would otherwise be a mysterious name.
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