Sounds an interesting site. I'm intrigued by the intermittent spring -
how do they cope with it? Does it have some sort of drain to flow into
when it rises or do your friends just head for the first floor? On a
totally unrelated subject, but a question that I've been meaning to ask
for ages is where in London was the "peerless pool" and why was it
peerless?
AEM
On Tue, 10 Nov 1998, K M Jordan wrote:
> On Sunday I went round Box in Wiltshire with Alison Borthwick, an
> archaeologist friend, who was able to add a lot more to my understanding
> of wells and springs in the area. I though a short report might be of
> interest...
>
> We parked in the marketplace and headed towards the church, passing a fine
> Victorian drinking fountain on the way. Ali explained how the church is
> in the centre of a Roman villa complex, which spreads from the river up
> the hill. The hill is terraced, and the terracing itself is probably
> Roman. The terracing is clearly visible in the grounds of the large house
> just west of the church, and here recently a Roman culvert was found. We
> stopped at the north-west side of the church to listed to the spring which
> runs in the crypt.
>
> Just East of the church, in the garden of Springfield, is the spring which
> I believe to be the Mediaeval Beckett's Well (the church is sacred to St.
> Thomas a Beckett). This is a very strong spring which gushes out of the
> hillside into a wide rectangular pool, now used as a water feature but
> which looks very much as if it may have been a bathing pool (this is all
> conjecture: I have no date for the pool...). We know the well was near
> the church as we have churchwarden's accounts from the eighteenth century
> detailing a certain amount of money expended for repairing Beckett's well.
> The water from the spring runs under the garden in a culvert and emerges
> by the church wall as a dipping well which served the houses nearby well
> into this century.
>
> The water then flows out to the south into the large pond in the garden of
> the house south of the church. When the pond was drained and excavated,
> many pieces of tesselated floor were found here, and in the gardens
> around, obviously from the villa. It seems this was a site of some
> considerable importance: silver eyes from high-status statues were found
> here. Ali reckons this was more that "just" a villa and that the church
> was sited on a previously sacred site.
>
> All the springs in Box are running well at the moment - I have a friend
> whose house is just within the bounds of the villa complex, and she has an
> intermittent spring which rises in her hall. A bit too much of a good
> thing.
>
> We then walked on to Middlehill Spa and looked at the eighteenth-century
> spa house and went past Spa Cottage. Middlehill is just a hamlet now, but
> at one time aspired to be a rival to Bath. I was unable to work out where
> the spa well(s?) had been, but there is a reasonable amount of water
> running down the hillside nearby.
>
> Katy
>
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