Finewell Street

Nicholas Casley in his recently published and well-researched study of St Andrew’s Church looks at a number of suggestions as to why the parish church was built where it was and includes the notion that “the key to the church’s position may also lie in the existence of a number of wells in the vicinity that were later to be used in the medieval town”. These he lists as Buck Well, Fine Well, and West Well in the immediate neighbourhood and “a little farther away Gilwell, Harwell, Holywell, Lady Well, Martocks Well and Quarry Well”. All but the last two have given us place names and each has their story to tell.

The Fine Well we can doubtless safely assume tapped into a water source of a superior quality to the Buck Well, which as it name implied was the well which yielded water to be used for bucking or washing.

The locations of these pre-municipal water supplies are for the most part quite clear, none more so than the Fine Well which for the last five hundred years has been just inside the impressive town house that the wealthy merchant Thomas Yogge had built for himself.

Long since erroneously known as the Prysten House, it is Plymouth’s finest non-secular medieval structure and it stands at the top of Finewell Street.

EH 3 May 1997