I noticed this stone structure as we drove through the nearby village of Greetham, so we stopped to take a look. It’s called Jacob’s Well and was built in 1850, in the gothic architecture style of the day.
Jacob’s Well provided clean drinking water to villagers as part of a national public health initiative following cholera outbreaks in the 1840s. The water comes from a natural spring nearby. Originally the water gushed from the lion’s head, and in later years it came from a tap. The villagers would collect the water in buckets.
The inscription reads:
“All ye who hither come to drink,
Rest not your thoughts below,
Remember Jacob’s Well and think,
Whence ‘living waters’ flow.”
An interesting thing to note is that “Jacob’s Well” is spelt without a possessive apostrophe. According to the information sign next to the well, stonemasons rarely used them.
Sadly, there isn’t any more information to find on Jacob’s Well, but I can’t help but think back to the people of the 1840s and 1850s, whose lives started to become a lot easier and safer as a result of the introduction of The Public Health Act of 1848.
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