TOTNES Leechwells: ancient magic healing waters, a modern day sacred site, or simply a 16th century tourist scam.

The hunt to find the official owners of the well site continues as town councillors try to sort out how they can get it repaired and who will pay for it.

Meanwhile, people continue to use it as a spiritual shrine (right), leaving votives and offerings of various kinds, from messages of peace to figures of undetermined religious identity.

Now local historian Bob Mann has revealed the wells' legend of magic healing properties may have stemmed from a failed Tudor marketing exercise designed to bolster the town's fading economy.

Mr Mann, who heads up the popular Totnes ghost walks which include the Leechwells, said the tales of healing wells dating back to the last millennium are all based on legend.

But there is a record of the town trying to cash in on the water at the end of the 16th century and in the early 17th century in the 1822 History of Devon by the Lyssons Brothers.

"The town was losing its prosperity because of the decline of the tin industry and changes in the cloth industry that the people did not keep up with," said Mr Mann.

"The good burghers of Totnes looked around for another source of income and decided to exploit the water as a healing well.

"They bottled the water and then tried to sell it. For a few years they couldn't bottle the water quickly enough.

"How they marketed it we don't know. Most probably it was by word of mouth. It wasn't successful and by 1630 it was all over.

"Totnes did not become another Bath or another Buxton."

He said the use of the wells as some sort of shrine seems to have started within the last 20 years and may date back to the town's 'very imaginative carnival' of 1993 which included an all faith ritual at the site.

"After that people seem to have started leaving things there," he said.

However, he said, there had been regular sightings of a ghost at the wells, a grey lady who had even been spotted during the town ghost walks he has been involved in.

The old wells, which are scheduled as an ancient monument, are currently in urgent need of repair.

The town council, which reckons the repair bill could be as high as £5,000, has been trying to find who actually owns the site, so far without any luck.

The well area is weed-filled and needs cleaning out and the wall in front of the spring is leaking so the water does not run properly into the three troughs designed for it.

Town councillor, and former mayor, Pruw Boswell is the modern-day warden of the wells, a post which dates back to the 15th century.

She said that whatever the source of the legend that it is a healing well, it is, "still a very special place – probably unique in the whole of England and should be treated with the utmost respect by everybody."

She said she had no objection to people treating it as a shrine, but added: "I wish they would come back and remove what they have left there when they have finished.

"If too many people come down and leave stuff it will ultimately become a mess."