Taking its name from a healing well whose waters bubble up through sand, the village of Scotlandwell was styled in early religious charters in its Latin form, Fons Scotiae – ‘The Well of Scotland’. Pilgrims en route to St Andrews stopped off here to drink the water and take the cures administered by the Red Friars who maintained a hospital close by, but all that came to an end with the Reformation in the late 16th century. Few people who come to visit the ornamental Well that gives Scotlandwell its name realise that, despite the antiquity of the village, the Well as it is today is just one element of a mid-19th-century enhancement scheme that took place between 1857 and 1860 at the whim of a local landowner, Thomas Bruce of Arnot.
Bruce had spent thirty years in the Bengal Civil Service, during which time he married his wife, Henrietta Dorin, the daughter of a London East India merchant. He came back to Britain in1855, his wife having returned the previous year due to poor health.
The eminent Victorian architect David Bryce, whose commissions included Fettes College and the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, was employed by Bruce to draw up plans for the creation of an ornamental Well and neighbouring Wash House, an unusually elegant building for its purpose.
In those days there was a small area of common land known as the Peat Hill, close to the Well. Shared by a number of villagers, this was where peat cut in Scotlandwell Moss was stacked to dry before being burned. The first and essential stage of Bruce’s remarkable undertaking was the acquisition of the shares in the Peat Hill owned by other villagers.
Using sandstone from quarries at Greenhead of Arnot and Nivingston near Cleish, the Well with its wooden canopy was completed in 1858 at a cost of £154. The stonework was carried out by local Scotlandwell mason Thomas Hay and the wooden canopy was erected by Alexander Kelloch, a carpenter from Lindores in Fife.
Thomas Bruce dedicated the Well to his dying wife and on either side of the water spout are carved the interwoven initials TBA for Thomas Bruce of Arnot and HD for Henrietta Dorin. On 3rd July 1858 the Well was inaugurated with great celebrations in the village.
The Wash House, which bears the initials TBA, was completed two years later, in 1860, for a total cost of £117.
For most of the 18th and early 19th centuries the majority of the villagers of Scotlandwell were involved in cottage spinning and weaving. The linen produced was spread out on the Green close to the Well area to be bleached. By the time of Bruce’s project cottage weaving had begun to die out due to competition from large factories in surrounding towns. As part of the scheme the Green was laid out as a drying area for items laundered in the Wash House.
As part of the upgrading project a large and beautiful walled garden containing exotic trees and shrubs was created between the Wash House and the main road on the site of the former Peat Hill.
One section of the handwritten ‘Notes on the Bruce Family’ compiled by Thomas Bruce records the following – Before the well and the wash house were built the precincts of the well formed an almost unapproachable slough of mire and filth; whilst a half ruinous building used sometimes as a wash house and sometimes as a slaughter house occupied the site of the small shrubbery to the rocks of the wall.
The Wash House, the Well, the bleaching green were given to the village in 1922 and have been owned by successive local authority bodies since then.
The garden, now in private ownership, remains an attractive feature of the village centre.
Following the introduction of piped water supplies to the houses in the village, the use of the Wash House gradually declined. It had not been operational since the early 1960s. Despite the fact that was is need of a considerable amount of repair it retained a distinguished look.
As part of a major project led by Scotlandwell in Bloom and culminating in 2013 the Wash House was restored. Panels inside provide information about the history of the village and about Victorian laundry facilities. The Wash House is kept locked but visitors can obtain a key from The Well Country Inn.