Oswestry's name is generally explained as a corruption of Oswald's Tree, or Oswaldstre, after the Northumbrian king Oswald, who was killed in battle against the Mercian king Penda near here at the Battle of Maserfield, traditionally dated to 641 or 642, one of the many bloody territorial contests that defined the political landscape of early Anglo-Saxon England. Oswald's body was reportedly dismembered by the victors and displayed on stakes afterward, a practice not uncommon for defeated kings and their followers in this brutal period of English history.
Local legend holds that an eagle carried one of Oswald's severed arms away from the battlefield entirely and eventually dropped it, and that a spring of water broke from the ground at the exact spot where the arm finally fell to earth, a miraculous origin story for what became a genuinely significant holy site.
Oswald was subsequently venerated as a Christian martyr and saint, and the well that bears his name became a recognised site of pilgrimage, credited over the following centuries with miraculous healing properties, particularly for eye complaints suffered by those who travelled to visit it. The legend is unusual among the entries gathered in this collection for blending a genuine, datable historical battle with an explicitly religious and miraculous folklore tradition rather than a conventional ghost story, and the well itself survives today as a recognised and still-visited local landmark.
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