One of its few regular visitors was Byron Hadley, an undertaker from nearby Northleach, who knew what it felt like to carry the weight of the departed on his shoulders. He had heard the story of Kenelm when he was a boy, and since 2018 had helped organise an annual pilgrimage to what he sincerely believed were healing waters – while rescuing the saint from what he called “the dustbin of history.”

“I feel his spirit is there, guiding me.” he told me on the phone. “Every day he is not far from my thoughts. Kenelm had a child-like faith. And maybe we all need to revert to being children – to believe wholeheartedly, not to question as adults do, but to accept what we read in the Bible.”

I sat for a while, listening to the hush of gently running water. A wood pigeon took flight nearby as I closed the door behind me and strode homeward across the Gloucestershire fields. Byron was frank that only about 50 people came on the annual pilgrimage. But, then again, in the 1970s only a few dozen people had walked the Camino, and in 2023 half a million pilgrims came. Long dormant things could sometimes bubble up to the surface, resurgent like a spring in spate.