York Historic Environment Record

Formerly known as: The Well House NEW WALK. Wellhead building. 1752. By John Carr, re-using some earlier stonework. Squared limestone blocks with some re-used sandstone pilaster bases. Asphalt roof. PLAN: rectangular, with battered side walls and with a semicircular projection at the rear.

EXTERIOR: west wall, facing the river, has an archway with semicircular head, worn voussoirs, and an impost band. It now has C20 iron gates. The parapet has saddlebacked coping stones, and 3 re-used moulded pilaster bases. The central one is surmounted by a broken C12 capital re-used as a finial.

INTERIOR: stone vaulted barrel roof, with semicircular niche in rear wall.

HISTORICAL NOTE: New Walk was laid out as a fashionable promenade between 1730-39, the wellhead being commissioned by the City Corporation to provide an interesting feature. The legend that stone from the chancel of All Saints Church, Pavement (qv), was re-used in the well is unfounded, since the chancel of the church was not demolished until 1782. Part of the fee paid to Carr for the well was retained by the City Corporation as payment for his Freedom of the City.

(Bartholomew City Guides: Hutchinson J and Palliser DM: York: Edinburgh: 1980-: 210; An Inventory of the Historical Monuments of the City of York: RCHME: Outside the City Walls East of the Ouse: HMSO: 1975-: 53; The Works in Architecture of John Carr: York: 1973-).

Listing NGR: SE6062550778

Derived from English Heritage LB download dated: 22/08/2005

Pikeing Well, New Walk is a stone structure desibned by John Carr. It was commissioned by the City Corporaiton in 1752 (VCH, York, 208) to form a decorative well head feature. It is a simple rectangular structure with round headed doorway in the sde facing the river; the coping on this side is made up reusing stones including three 12th century capitals as finials

An Inventory of the Historical Monuments of the City of York: RCHME: Outside the City Walls East of the Ouse: HMSO: 1975-: 53. Monument 30

NMR Information

Full description. (SE 60575069 - sited from HHR map)

5343 NEW WALK

Pikeing Well (formerly listed as The Well House (The Pikeing Well))

SE 6050 NE 25/400 14.6.54. II*

2. 1752. Designed by John Carr. A small stone structure over a well-head (now disused). West side, facing the river, has a semi-circular headed doorway with renewed heavy oak divided door and coping of re-used stones, including material from the chancel (demolished 1750) of All Saints Church, Pavement. The interior has a barrel roof, semi-circular niche at rear, and steps down to the well.
(RCHM Vol IV, Monument 30).

Sources
1 List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest. pp 257-58 City of York, June 1983
2 List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest District of York, 14-MAR-1997

BF060936 PIKEING WELL, YORK File of material relating to a site or building. This material has not yet been fully catalogued.

York Archaeological Trust, Pikeing Well, New Walk (Unpublished document). SYO2379.

RCHME, 1975, RCHME Volume 4, Outside the City Walls East of the Ouse (Monograph). SYO2424.

YAT, 1998-2000, INTERIM 23, 23/4 (Serial). SYO2663.

YAT, 2002, Pikeing Well (Unpublished document). SYO1544.

NMR, 2019, NMR data (Digital archive). SYO2214.