Convent Well at Woodnesborough rediscovered

Large-scale Ordnance Survey maps of the Sandwich region have, since the nineteenth century, regularly marked the site of Convent Well at Woodnesborough.

The site lies some 600 metres north-east of Woodnesborough parish church, at the foot of a ridge of high ground, over-looking Sandwich and the South Poulders marshes; NGR TR 31090 57264. A visit in March 2014 showed the well site to be situated in the corner of a ploughed field at the foot of a steep, over-grown lynchet bank, almost 2 metres high, but there were no surface traces of any well here, or even damp ground. Local enquiries provided little further information concerning the lost well, beyond the fact that the site is known locally, and more correctly, as Conduit Well.

At the invitation of the current owners, Mr and Mrs Hall, who have a particular interest in the lost well, members of the Dover Archaeological Group undertook an investigation of the site between March and June 2014. Excavation led to the discovery of the remains of a small stone-built conduit house, buried in the lynchet bank, with portions of its medieval walls still standing to a height of more than one metre. Inside the little building an intact, capped-off well shaft was found.

Convent or Conduit Well originated in the medieval period and the site once belonged to the Carmelite Friary at Sandwich, located some 2km to the north-east. A single documentary reference of the early fourteenth century records the only known details:

1306, Thomas Shelving bequeathed to the friar 'a plot of land in Woodnesborough, 12ft by12ft [3.65m], with a spring there, to enclose it and make an underground conduit through his land to their house'.
Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward III, 1301-1307.

Thomas Shelving was a leading Sandwich wool merchant who came from a wealthy, long established family that held a large manorial estate at Woodnesborough (Clarke 2010 et al., 287, note 76). The Carmelite Friary at Sandwich (Whitefriars) was established in about 1268, built across low-lying marshland on the edge of town. Its site is now largely covered by modern housing but excavations have recovered its plan (Rigold 1965; Parfitt 1993). The conduit house enclosed a central well shaft 0.84m square and over 1.60m (5ft 3ins) deep. The shaft itself had been very carefully constructed. At the base, layers of laid flint cobbles set in clay provided a foundation for rough, large, horizontal slabs of

LEFT At work on the well.

RIGHT The excavated structure looking west. Scales, one metre and 50cm.

undressed ragstone, positioned along each side of the intended shaft. These slabs gave solid support for the main well lining, which consisted of five courses of neatly cut and laid blocks of Caen stone, extending to a height of about 1.20m. No water inlets were present in this block work and, as seen during the excavation, the natural spring water flowed in through the basal cobbles. Although there were no inlet holes in the sides of the well, the north-east side of the shaft showed clear evidence of an original outlet. About halfway up the shaft wall, a Caen stone block drilled with a roughly circular hole about 0.10m in diameter occurred. This clearly represented an original outlet for the accumulated spring water and must have discharged into the culvert leading away to the friary.

The top of the well shaft was protected within the small, square, conduit house, which measured internally 1.11m across (3ft 8ins). This appeared to be contemporary with shaft and had walls between 0.38 and 0.50m thick. These survived up to a height of 1.35m (4ft 5ins), being best preserved where they were built into the pre-existing lynchet bank on the south-western side. Forward of the bank, the north-east wall was completely missing, possibly destroyed in recent times. The remaining walls of the building were constructed from mortared flint cobbles, with some Caen stone; the corners were turned in medieval yellow-pink brick. Traces of internal rendering showed that the walls had originally been plastered.

A series of roughly laid ragstone blocks exposed on the north-western slope of the lynchet bank appeared to represent the collapsed remains of a crude flight of steps that once led down to the well site from the trackway that runs along the top of the bank. Two bricks, probably of later eighteenth or early nineteenth century date, incorporated with the stones suggest a post-medieval date for these steps, perhaps c. 1800. Thus, although the steps were not part of the original medieval arrangement, they do imply that fairly regular access to the well site continued to be required until relatively recent times.

The only significant modification made to the original medieval structure itself, occurred sometime during the mid-late twentieth century, when a new underground pipe was inserted to convey the still-flowing spring water away from the well. The shaft was then sealed with concrete slabs and the enclosing conduit house buried under tonnes of soil, rubble and general rubbish tipped down the bank from the west. With this covering material in place, all traces of Convent Well were lost. After a few weeks re-exposed in 2014, the well site has now been back-filled for safety and to preserve it for the future.

Bibliography

Clarke, H., Pearson, S., Mate, M. and Parfitt, K., 2010 Sandwich – The 'Completest Medieval Town in England': A Study of the Town and Port from its Origins to 1600 (Oxbow, Oxford).

Parfitt, K., 1993 Excavations at the Carmelite Friary Sandwich, 1971 and 1993, Kent Archaeol. Rev. 113, 59-63.

Rigold, S.E., 1965 Two Kentish Carmelite Houses – Aylesford and Sandwich, Arch. Cant., LXXX, 1-28.