St Simon’s Well

According to Edmund Bogg in “From Eden Vale to the plains of York or A Thousand Miles in the Valleys of the Nidd and Yore” (1894) ”In the township of East Scrafton is a spring of water known as St. Simon’s Well. Near it once stood an oratory called St. Simon’s Chapel; not a vestige of this remains. The well was formerly used as a bath. Tradition says that St. Simon, the Canaanean and apostle, was buried here. The memory of the Saint is still observed on the annual feast held at Coverham.”

“The ruins of St. Simon’s are forgot,
That deep, sequestered, wood overshadowed spot.
Suppose it truth what records old declare,
The holy Canaanite was buried there?
Near Coverside, where from a rocky dell,

“The streams gush out and fill the ancient well.
And still one day in honour of the saint
In feasting, yearly, through the dale is spent.”

East Scrafton is a hamlet in the civil parish of Caldbergh and East Scrafton.  The Chapel of St Simon was a chapel of ease which may have been near St Simons bridge over the river Cover.