198 MINERAL WATERS AND MEDICINAL SPRINGS OF ESSEX.
appears of a bluish colour when viewed from the top. It has a faintish taste
but, in my opinion, not a disagreeable one."
The doctor then gives in detail the results of seventeen
experimental tests to which he submitted the water ; which
tests, he says,19
" tend to prove that this water is chiefly selenitic, with a small impregnation of
sulphur. It is considered by the common people as a purging-water, but, I
think, with no reason ; for, although it be drank in very large quantities, it will
not act as a purgative in some constitutions.
" The drying and astringent quality of this water must be of great service
when the animal secretions become too profuse and in all unnatural discharges
of blood, . . .
" . . .I have heard that the common people in the neighbourhood wash their
sores with this water, with very good effect ; but, if they were to make trial of
the black sludge about the well, I think that they would not repent of the
experiment. , . ."
The well in question still exists. It occupies a secluded posi-
tion, remote from any footpath, in one of the parks adjoining
Weald Hall (C. J. H. Tower, Esq.)—not that immediately sur-
rounding the mansion, but the smaller one, known as the
"Front Park," which lies on the further side of the road and
to the south of the house19". The well is still protected by the
above-mentioned dome of brickwork (fig. 1), about five feet
high, which looks as though it might have been built about
the beginning of the Eighteenth Century. Cut in the bricks are
very many names and initials—presumedly those of persons who
have visited the well and drunk of its waters.
The Rev. Canon Fraser, vicar of South Weald, says20 :—
" This well was formerly much frequented and highly appreciated by the sick
folk of the neighbourhood, and especially by the poor lepers from the Hospital
in Brook Street, on account of its healing qualities.
" There are persons still living who can remember the day when the good
people of Brentwood—the sick, the halt, and the withered, as at Bethesda's
Pool—used to flock in crowds to drink at the waters of this spring."
Some fifteen years ago, Mr. Charles B. Sworder, of Epping,
stated 21 at a meeting of this Club that, at that time, the spring
used to be visited after hay-time and harvest by "many agricul-
tural labourers from Stanford Rivers and Stapleford Tawney"
(and, doubtless, other neighbouring places), to "take the
19 Op. cit., pp. 32-33.
19a It is marked "Chalybeate Spring" on the 6-inch Ordnance Map.
30 South Weald : its History, its Churches, its Vicars, etc. [1895], under descrip. of Weald
Hall.
21 Essex Naturalist, vii., p. 43 (1893).