The Beginning

Where Our Vision Took Shape

In June 2024, members of MMC visited St Ronan’s Well as part of ongoing research for a much larger MetaMapping project. At the time, we were investigating a number of sites of significance across the Borderlands - places with deep historical, cultural, and sacred value - to better understand how physical locations hold and transmit deeper heritage.

St Ronan’s Well was one of many sites on that list. We didn’t expect it to stop us in our tracks.

First Impressions: A Place on the Edge

From the moment we arrived, the gardens stood out. They were beautifully kept, clearly cared for, and offered expansive views across the surrounding countryside. There were unmistakable signs of human attention and effort - evidence that this place still mattered to someone, that it hadn’t been entirely abandoned.

And yet, the building itself told a different story. Closed. Weathered. Quietly slipping toward ruin.

That contrast was striking. On one hand, there was care, intention, and life still present. On the other, the slow pull of entropy was undeniable. It felt like St Ronan’s Well was balanced on a threshold - not yet lost, but perilously close to becoming another site that slips from lived experience into the archive. Very MMC...

Conversations Over Coffee

After walking the gardens, we found ourselves in a local café, talking through what we’d seen. The conversation shifted quickly from observation to concern. The more we reflected, the clearer it became that this wasn’t simply an “interesting” site - it was a place on the cusp, with enormous potential still lingering just beneath the surface.

We’d already been working on questions around how heritage survives: how stories, practices, and local knowledge are carried not just through documents, but through active, physical places. Sitting there, it became obvious that St Ronan’s Well held exactly that kind of layered, living significance - and that it was at real risk of being lost.

Scratching the Surface

Our curiosity turned into urgency when we began looking into the site’s status and discovered via the LiveBorders website that St Ronan’s Well had officially closed, alongside a call for community feedback on its future.

That was the turning point.

The possibility that this place - still so full of atmosphere, memory, and cultural depth - could simply fade away sharpened everything. Once a physical site like this is lost, the intangible cultural heritage bound up within it often goes too: the stories, the rituals, the local meanings that never quite make it into formal records.

A Shift in Focus

Although we were already deep into planning a much larger project, St Ronan’s Well immediately became a priority. The sense that something could still be done - that this place hadn’t crossed the point of no return - made it impossible to ignore.

We contacted LiveBorders and the Scottish Borders Council straight away, seeking to understand why the site had fallen into disrepair and whether there was any scope to intervene, support, or reimagine its future.

For us, this wasn’t about nostalgia or preservation for its own sake. It was about keeping a piece of living cultural heritage alive - ensuring that St Ronan’s Well could remain a place of connection, meaning, and community, rather than becoming another name in the historical record.

Looking Ahead

What began as part of broader Borderlands research became something far more immediate. St Ronan’s Well revealed itself as a site where care and decay exist side by side, where the future is still undecided, and where the deeper layers of local heritage are still accessible.

We left with a strong sense that this place still has life in it. And that, sometimes, recognising a moment like this - when something is balanced on the edge - is the beginning of responsibility, not just inspiration. And MMC is all about holding the in-between...