Dear Editor: Re. The Convent Well at Woodnesborough

Dear Editor

Re The Convent Well at Woodnesborough – Newsletter, Winter 2014

The spring still flows as it has done for the last 700 years, through two kilometres of maintained open ditches to Sandwich, where now it ends up in the Stour. In earlier times, we presume it was culverted through the Woodnesborough Gate into the town. In 1483, the Sandwich Jurats authorized expenditure on four thousand bricks to build a cistern to use the water to supplement the town supply from the Delf, so presumably the town retained some responsibility for maintaining the system until it went out of use in 1899.

John Simpson, of Affinity Water, tested the water from the spring and deduced that it was a greensand water spring rather than from chalk. The water was harder, slightly more acidic and with higher levels of iron and lead, although not enough to be of any applicable toxicological significance. However, there was a high bacteria level which would be a reflection of the land use where the rain water enters the acquifer which becomes this spring. That could reflect a change in land use over time, but if historically so, “…the friars either had a good immune system or became sick quite frequently.”

One further point about the structure itself: it incorporates bricks put in place post-1306 but probably not so much later. The first recorded brick making in Kent is 1467 so these were re-gig imports, most likely from the Low Countries, and are therefore one of the earliest extant uses of brick so far recorded in Kent.

Yours sincerely,
Peter Hobbs