Clerks' well
Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury
Site: Clerks' well (1 memorial)
EC1, Farringdon Lane, 16
Through the window to the right of the plaque can be seen the actual well, discovered during building works in 1924. This building (labelled "Well House") also contains a little display about the well, including a pump spout with a two-part plaque around it, as follows:
"A.D. 1800. William Bound and Joseph Bird : Church Wardens.
For the better accommodation of the neighbourhood this pump was removed to the spot where it now stands. The spring by which it is supplied is situated four feet eastward and round it, as history informs us, the parish clerks of London in remote ages annually performed sacred plays. That custom caused it to be denominated Clerks Well and from which this parish derived its name.
The water was greatly esteemed by the prior and brethren of the order of St John of Jerusalem and the Benedictine Nuns in the neighbourhood.
This tablet which was formerly fixed on the site of the ancient Clerks' Well, viz, the pumphouse No 2 Ray Street, 119 yards westward, was fixed here as a memento of the past in 1878.
W.J. Harrison and George Blackie: Church Wardens."
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