Quote:
Born in Quarrendon, Buckinghamshire (at that time part of Mercia), she was the daughter of Frithwald, a sub-king of Mercia in Surrey, and was the niece of Saint Edith and Saint Edburga of Bicester. Her mother was Wilburga, the daughter of the pagan King Penda of Mercia.
Raised in a convent in Warwickshire under the direction of Saint Modwen her ambition was to become an abbess, but she was too important as a dynastic pawn to be set aside.
Forced by her father into a dynastic marriage with King Sighere of Essex, she did her dynastic duty and produced him a son. While her husband ran off to hunt down a beautiful white stag, Osyth persuaded two local bishops to accept her vows as a nun. Then, eventually, perhaps after Sighere's death, she established a convent at Chich, in Essex, where she ruled as first abbess.
She was murdered by Danish Viking marauders in 653.
The site of her martyrdom became transferred to the holy spring at Quarrendon. The holy spring at Quarrendon, mentioned in the time of Osyth's aunts, now became associated with her legend, in which Osyth stood up after her execution, picking up her head like Saint Denis in Paris, and other cephalophoric martyrs and walking with it in her hands, to the door of a local convent, before collapsing there..
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Town planners in the 60s - may they be damned for many reasons - used the name Quarrendon for a council estate. I was born there. My sister went to Quarrendon Secondary School (supposed by many to be little better than Borstal, but she disproved that) amd I've just heard my nephew is bound there too.
But the well was in what is now known as Bierton, and is there still.
Well and village pump and Mum. You can work out which is which
If you look at the first pic then turn slowly to the right you will see what is in the second. I tried panoramic but it didn't work as well as two separate ones. And Mum kept moving.