The *Round Well* at Costessey: 2nd Sept 2019
My submission for the #2019picoftheweek challenge title: All’s Well
For details of #2019picoftheweek challenge see MariaAntonia
This magnificent well sits beside the main Norwich to Dereham road, at the corner of Longwater Lane in Costessey. Despite misinformation to the contrary, it is not a sacred well but of quite modern origin, believed constructed by French prisoners of war (according to Norfolk County Council’s Heritage site, but then they date it to 1820). As a child, I remember a ricketty wooden door at the back, peeping through it to spy the ferns that grew from the damp brickwork inside. It has since been secured.
Long shot of Round Well with obelisk: 2nd Sept 2019
crispina kemp 
Nice take on this prompt! Very unique and different Crispina! 😀 ❤
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I thank you. Though the photo would have been better taken p.m. but… you take what you can.
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I can’t help myself but to say “Well! It’s quite the well!” and it is. There’s so much detail. All those small stones placed between or over the brick. A work of art. I’m wondering if those ferns still thrive, It would be interesting to have a peek 🙂 Those French POW’s were probably very proud.
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They ought to have been. But I doubt the ferns are still there. They do need just a glimmer of light, and the old door has been replaced by a monstrous black metal thing. I know it was needed. Health & Safety and all that. But it doesn’t exactly blend with the structure.
And this is where I lived, close by here, for the first 18 years of my life. And I returned, and I returned, and still I return.
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Oh well I was thinking perhaps a little light might get through from cracks in the structure. I think there’s too much concern for safety in some instances. I’m still here and relatively healthy and I drink tap water. I could go on, obviously 🙂 It sounds like this place has a very special spot in your heart.
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I drink tap water. It’s been declared the cleanest water in UK, with no additives but for a miniscule drop of chlorine to counter any nasties from old piping systems.
And yes, a very special place. Not for the people (I didn’t get on with my mother and had very few friends) but for the land, the hills, the trees, the flowers, the rivers and streams, the hidden nocks, the wood banks beneath which the gnomes lived… live.
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So it is very special. A place where your imagination could fly. I can very much relate to the relationship with your Mother, mine was there and wasn’t really. I had tons of “Friends” but not one. You’re lucky to have a place like this to return to.
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It changes with time. Yet it remains. And it features in some of my longer fiction
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Makes sense! Especially when it inspires you 🙂
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Indeedy
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😊
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What a beauty! I’ve never seen such a picturesque well. Excellent choice.
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I thank you, J. I’ve been sitting on this title for ages (about 8 months) knowing exactly the shot I wanted. This is where I grew up. 🙂
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Lovely take on the prompt, Crispina.
They probably secured it because of you 😉
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I laugh. I thank you. Yes, I did investigate. But that’s cos I knew how it used to be.
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Tee hee…
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Is there an emoji with the tongue stuck out? Oh, well, I’ll have you reply with a smile. 🙂
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😛😝😜🤪
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Yea, okay. And I know I could access via some site of other, but I’m IT lazy.
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Hahaha!
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What an interesting well.
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I don’t see it as odd, cos I grew up with it. But taking the photo and posting it here, I see it in new light. It is, indeed, interesting.
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What an interesting well! I’ve never seen one quite like it. Love how you used the prompt this week! 🙂
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I thank you, Maria. I’ve had this well in mind fr this title for a long while. I think part of its charm might be due to it being built on Lord Stafford’s estate, and assumingly using his money. It was set side the new Turnpike road. Perhaps he hoped to make money from it in some way.
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Everything you post makes me want to come visit these places!!!
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Maybe I should work for Tourism? 🙂
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French prisoners of war in 1820? What did they do, stay on after Napoleon’s defeat?
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Don’t know. That’s what Norfolk Heritage site says. Maybe we should ask Norfolk County Council. Or maybe the pows began it, but it wasn’t completed till then?
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I have amended the blurb (to lay the blame where it belongs… apologies to NCC). Thanks for pointing that out.
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Sorry to be nitpicking. A mistake? A more complicated story? Shipped in from an alternate universe by a water Asar?
Coincidentally CGP Grey just posted a video on YouTube in which he tries to sort out the contradictions in a story about how Staten Island ended up in New York. Similar sort of problem: something didn’t quite add up.
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I like the idea of it being shipped in by a water-Asar. Fitting, that.
BTW, I may have solved the Priory Project anomoly. 🙂
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Interesting! I don’t think I’ve ever seen that style of well, all enclosed like that with a bowl in front. And the idea of putting an obelisk on top is very new to me, too.
I’ve tried searching for “round well” and am not getting anything about the wells themselves (just a lot of roads and companies named Roundwell). Is there another name for this style?
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Try this enormously long link to the NCC Heritage site.
http://www.heritage.norfolk.gov.uk/record-details?MNF7917-Round-Well-obelisk&Index=4&RecordCount=5&SessionID=10134f6f-8543-417b-8d52-abace42f493c
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Thanks – that helps clear up the obelisk timing. I can’t quite tell if “Round Well” is the name of it, or the description. Either one of which would be funny because, as you say in the title of this post, it’s actually square.
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I’m thinking there might have been a well there from days gone by, which was round. But when, c.1800, it had a smart encasing, the name was kept. Only one thing speaks against that. Until they drove the turnpike road through, it would have no traffic. The original road followed the river through the village. It’s all very odd.
I’m trying to remember the shape of the well inside that casing. I remember the ferns growing. I remember dark damp red bricks. But was it a round shaft, or square? I think it was round. But I wouldn’t swear to it.
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It could be yet another example of history that we can’t piece back together correctly, even when we have a few clues. Which of course makes it extra interesting!
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Well, if the archaeologists can’t get it right, what hope for us.
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Yes exactly — I meant we in the broad sense of modern scholars et al.
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Yea, I know. But I was bringing it back home, 🙂
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I lived there for the early part of my life, and all I get when I google is the Roundwell Medical Centre, which was built on the site of the former Roundwell Public House, post 1983.
BTW, there were three sacred wells in the vicinity, accredited and dedicated to St Walstan. Each was beside a river: The River Wensum, River Tud and River Yare. That beside the River Yare, at the neighbouring village of Bawburgh, was until recently an active pilgrimage site. The well next to the Tud has been excavated by archaeologists. The third is mostly silted and overgrown. Though I have memories of losing my foot down it when a kid!
However, those three all sit in valleys, while this beastie sits on a hill. A long way down to the water table? One assumes so. This is sandy-gravel, a terminal moraine from an Ice Age (don’t know which Ice Age; not the last, the last never reached that far)
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Clearly I’m going to have to learn more about wells, and add some sacred wells into Eneana somewhere. Although I see your point: a hill seems poor placement.
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You might like to read about St Walstan’s Well at Bawburgh. Somewhere deep in the archives of my blog, I have a feature about that, with photo. I think. But regardless, you’ll find it online.
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Another link for you: The same year as I was back on my feet after 13 yrs of CFS/ME, I wrote a post for my every walk, indulging my obsession with local history. At the time I was only using a Nokia phone-camera, so the shots aren’t whizzo. But I thought it might interest you.
https://crispinakemp.com/2014/10/05/norfolk-hills/
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That is quite the obsession with local history, and it pays off with such a post! The part about The Dog pub no longer being called that reminds me of the small town/rural area I grew up in, where people still gave directions based on what the buildings *used* to be called, or based on buildings that hadn’t been there for years!
Plus it is a surprise treat to see a sign for toad crossing, as that is my first.
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Like I said in the post, they used to hop through my place. The kids would collect them in buckets and take them down to their breeding grounds. We Brits care about our wildlife. We haven’t the wide vistas you have in the States, so every little corner is treasured and protected. For example, if a new road is to cross a badger trail, then a tunnel is made for them to cross in safety.
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I love your take on the prompt! Very well done!
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Ah, this had been waiting. I knew what shot I wanted to use. I just had to get there.
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It is magnificent, though I’m a little sad you can no longer peep through the old wooden door!
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Me too. Even more sad that it’s closed with an uninteresting chunk of black metal.
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I have passed this well so many times when we were living in Hingham. It is great to now now its origins. Excellent photo, and thank you for bringing back some pleasant memories.
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Hey, you lived in Hingham. I used to bike into Hingham when I lived at Morley St Botolph. But that was so long ago to be in another world.
Glad this raised some happy memoies. Does for me too; I grew up here.
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