I found this from 2002...
The well, situated in Jeffs on Bold Street was uncovered during renovations.
Today it stands as a wishing well, with the money that is thrown into it going to Alder Hey Rocking Horse charity
"I had about eight men working with me in the basement in the dark and there was this little hole that kept appearing on the floor over a period of three or four days.
I was convinced it was a little rat hole, but it wouldn’t fill in.
I made it bigger and shone the torch down and all I could see for 35, 40 feet was water. The following morning inspectors for the Building Regulations came from the Liverpool Corporation. They said they didn’t like the look of it and it would be best filled in.
I made a phone call to the History Museum of Liverpool and they said;
" That is one of the greatest finds in Liverpool City Centre."
So I set about building the well.
The archaeologists spent three weeks here and they found lots of things; clay pipes, little bits of porcelain. They dated it at 240 years old and they reckon it was there when Bold Street was just fields.
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At that time it was built purely for water drinking purposes. The water comes through the sandstone. It takes years to come through and it purifies itself. They used to hide them so no-one knew where they were, because drinking water was such a premium in those days. They think possibly the monks had something to do with it.
The archaeologists found that there was little channels making their way to the well.
Under two foot of soil we found these channels.
Back in the 17th Century and the beginning of the 18th Century, the land was owned by the Bowler family, but it used to be called Rope Street, because of Rope Walks.
In Rope Walks, they used to measure the rope from the top of Bold Street to the bottom because that was the length needed for the tunnel ships and that’s how they’d cut it.
They think that possibly plaiting these ropes had something to do with the channels they found underground leading towards the well. In other words they would lower the ropes down in the water via the channels and would drag them and plait them as they were bringing them up.
When people look over, they expect to look about four feet down. When they see it's forty feet down, their breath goes and they think they’re going to fall in."
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