ng0ton ftoman Well. 



By J. C. MANSBL-PLBYDELL, Esq., 

 P.G.S., F.L.S. 



HE accidental circumstance of a heavy traction- 

 engine passing over an arable field in the parish 

 of Winterborne Kingston led to the discovery of 

 the well which is the subject of this paper. 

 During the process of extricating the wheel of 

 the engine from the hole into which it had sunk 

 it was found to be the mouth of a well, and, as a similar one had 

 been found many years before in a neighbouring field and was proved 

 to be Roman or Romano-British, I thought it would be a favourable 

 opportunity to ascertain if the rainfall eighteen hundred years 

 ago differed materially from that of the present day, also to get the 

 approximate date when the well was filled up, which would 

 presumably be between the time when the Romans finally left the 

 island and the struggle of the helpless Britons with their Saxon 

 invaders. The subsoil of the field in which the well was sunk is 

 chalk, overlaid with materials derived from the Woolwich and 

 Reading beds, about six feet in thickness ; the head of the 

 well was not built up with "blocks of greensand and chalk a 

 foot square," which Hutchins describes to have been the case 

 with the neighbouring well, but which might, however, have been 



