In June 2003, during the laying of foundations for a residential development on land formerly known as Halecroft, Worcestershire, a thirteenth-century stone well was uncovered at a depth of approximately four metres below current ground level.
The well measured ninety centimetres in diameter at its mouth and was lined with local sandstone blocks consistent with construction dating to the late twelfth or early thirteenth century. It had been deliberately filled and capped at some point in the seventeenth century, probably during or shortly after the period of the Civil War conflicts in this region.
Two objects were recovered from the base of the fill.
The first: a broken cooking pot, earthenware, unglazed, consistent with the late fourteenth century. Rim diameter approximately twenty centimetres. The break was old; the pot had not been whole when it entered the well.
The second: a small clay bead, unglazed, approximately eight millimetres in diameter. It has no known comparanda in the regional record. Its use is unclear. It was not threaded; there is no perforation. It may have been a child's object. It may have meant nothing at all.
No documentary record of this well appears in any surviving paper of the Hale family, whose tenancy of this land is otherwise well-attested from the eleventh century through to the early twentieth.
The site reference was filed with the planning authority in August 2003. No further investigation was commissioned.
The bead was retained by the site archaeologist.
The cooking pot is now lost.