Jacob's Well, York

Jacob’s Well in York is a rather splendid old house dating back to 1474. From 1549, it became the retirement home of Isabella Warde, the previous Prioress of Clementhorpe Priory, which had been dissolved with the rest by Harry Tudor and Tom Cromwell. She had made it something of a family home with her brother, a similarly dismissed Benedictine monk, along with another sister.

Although the idea of some elderly siblings all living together in a rather charming house sounds rather appealing (and not unlike a set of characters from the mind of a late Georgian lady novelist), this would, for Isabella, have been a social climb down. Bereft of power and a large income, dependent upon a state pension of six and a half pounds per year, she would have had plenty of time to think.

The name Jacob’s Well cannot be accounted for, though it is surely an allusion to the scriptural place at which the Lord Jesus meets the Samaritan woman in John’s gospel. She is also rather alone in the world, having fallen down the ladder on account of her loose living and marital disharmony. Yet there, by Jacob’s well, she met Jacob’s God. There, all athirst, she drank from the Water of Life. Perhaps the former prioress felt the same way. Sometimes, we ignore God when we are at the pinnacle of our careers; a fall down the rungs is the best thing that happens to us.

Let the weak say, I am strong. Joel 3:10