This is an 18th century brick well that was was found in front of 40 Cornhill Street about two weeks ago. In particular the shape of this well puzzled us. You can see at the top of the picture that the well is perfectly round and then at the bottom the walls straighten out forming a teardrop shape. We originally thought that the walls may have pinched in from the weight of the soil on the other side of the wall but the more we dug the more we were convinced that this was intentional. If you have any ideas as to the shape of this well please feel free to comment!The small hole you see in the bottom-center of the picture is from an auger we used to try to test how deep the well is. The auger actually slipped down into the hole suggesting that there is an air pocket beneath the layer you see here. Judging from other wells in Annapolis that we know of, this well is most likely about 15 to 20 feet deep.
The well was almost certainly in use into the 20th century. Within this well we found a lot of 20th century artifacts including the glass bottle shown here:This is a Snider's Chili Catsup bottle which dates to the mid-20th century. The presence of these 20th century artifacts suggests that the well was filled in throughout the 20th century.
At the time of these photos we were about 3 and a half feet down to the first course of bricks of the well and then another 2 and a half feet down into the well. Considering how deep we were and the likelyhood that there was an airpocket in the well we decided that it would be too dangerous to dig further without proper shoring of the walls of the excavation and also some kind of a harness in case it were to collapse. We also know that the undergrounding of overhead electrical wires is not likely to go deeper than we have already excavated so we decided that it would be best to leave the well intact in the ground. Essentially we chose to preserve the site by leaving it alone.
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