St John's Well, Harrogate

Now a sewing shop, St John's well stands isolated on the A661 Wetherby Road. IT is in an area of parkland called the Stray. It is also very close to another memorial I photographed some time ago.
This particular well was named after a church, later replaced by Christ's Church in Church Square.

St John's Well plaque,
Inscription below

 THIS CHALYBEATE SPRING, WAS ORIGINALLY KNOWN AS THE SWEET SPA, WAS DISCOVERED BY DR. M.STANHOPE, WHO DESCRIBED IT IN HIS "CURES WITHOUT CARE" OF 1632. a STONE COVERING WAS PROVIDED IN 1656. THE FIRST PUMP ROOM BEING BUILT IN 1786 BY LORD LOUGHBOROUGH. THE PRESENT BUILDING WAS ERECTED BY THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS IN 1842 TO A DESIGN BY I.T.SHUTT, ARCHITECT OF THE ROYAL PUMP ROOM.

For a description of chalybeate go here. I had never heard of this word 'til now!
Thre is a reseach document on spring water here.

The arch over the front door, compete with burgular alarm!

View from the rear - The plaque is just visible

The other rear view. The building has 8 sides.

This is clearly a drinking trough. There is a waste pipe running towards the ground.
The vertical slot looks like it may have had a lever attached at some point.

The main Wetherby Road - Wethereby is to the right. The photo is from the Stray.

Below is an excerpt from the history of Christ Church a few hundred metres from St Johns Well. The link to the website is here.

The real story of the worshipping Christian community in Harrogate begins in 1749 when a Chapel of St John was built so that those who had come to take the waters of the developing spa town had a place in which to say their prayers. It was a small building capable of seating about 100 people and was a chapel-of-ease to the mother church of St John the Baptist at Knaresborough. This was the first Christian community established in Harrogate and - other than the chantry chapel - the first church building to be built in the town. This also demonstrates an often forgotten feature of the Church of England in the 18th century: it is a century often described as a time of little zeal in church life, but the Rector of Knaresborough, like many of his contemporaries, shows genuine missionary instincts in planting a new church in this growing partof his parish.

The new church building was known as St John's Chapel because of its links with its mother church at Knaresborough, but it was dedicated on 17 June 1749 as Christ Church. The links with Knaresborough remained until 1852 when Christ Church became a parish in its own right, and the patronage (i.e. the right of appointing the vicar) passed from the Rector of Knaresborough to the Bishop of Ripon. As Harrogate grew and prospered over the next 150 years four further parishes were formed from Christ Church, High Harrogate: St John's Bilton in 1858, St Peter's in the town centre in 1870, St Luke's in 1898, and St Andrew's Starbeck in 1911