202 MINERAL WATERS AND MEDICINAL SPRINGS OF ESSEX.
and was kept so for some years. A writer, speaking of this spring in 1834, 100
years after it was enclosed, says 'many persons now living recollect its being
enclosed, but it is now unenclosed and nearly filled with mud, which, and the
water, are both of a most nauseous smell, but tasteless. Some bricks lately
taken out are turned black to the middle of them. The smell strongly
resembles that issuing from a smith's trough in which hot iron is plunged. This,
probably, is testimony to its mineral qualities.'
" No doubt it [the water] is highly purgative and diuretic, as it contains
sulphate of magnesia and muriate of soda, but it has never been properly
analysed. Had the locality been in its favour and patrons been found, it might,
with a little skill, have proven as efficacious as any celebrated spring. It is now
a somewhat difficult job to find it, though still in existence."
At the present day, the well, though totally neglected for its
mineral and medicinal properties, is well-preserved and
protected by a triangular wooden fence (fig. 2).32a This is said33
FIG. 2—THE MINERAL SPRING O.N TYLER'S COMMON, UPMINSTER
(from a drawing by H. A. Cole).
to have been erected about 1886 by Mr. Champion Branfill (the
sixth of that name to own the well), of Martyns, Upminster, but
was probably in part a renewal of the fencing erected in 1734 by
Mr. Champion Branfill (the first of that name).
Mr. Walter Crouch, F.Z.S., of Wanstead, who visited the
well on 21st June 1890, in company with Messrs. William and
H. A. Cole, writes34 :—
" Pieces of the dried earth—a kind of iron clay—which was . . . thrown
32a The well is shown, though not named, on Chapman and Andre's Map of Essex (1777)
but is neither shown nor named on the 6-inch Ordnance Map.
33 See Mr. W. Crouch, in Essex Nat., iv , p. 196 (1890).
34 Essex Nat., iv., p. 196 (1890).