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Description: | Coloured etching. The image depicts the petrifying spring, known as the Dropping Well, at Knaresborough in Yorkshire. At the time this work was published the area belonged to two neighbouring landowners: the Dropping Well was the property of Sir Henry Slingsby, fifth Baronet (1693-1763), while the ruined castle belonged to Richard Boyle, third Earl of Burlington (1694-1753).
Almost a century and a half later, in 1888, the still considerable attraction of the spring was explained by an article in the ‘York Herald’:
Opposite the ruins of Knaresborough Castle, on the south-west bank of the river Nidd, you will observe the petrifying spring of Knaresborough - the celebrated dropping-well - where the peasants and the needy crowd to make their humble fortunes by afterwards retailing small sprigs of trees, such as the elder of ash, or pieces of the elegant geranium, the wild angelica, or the lovely violet, turned into ‘obdurate stone.’ … Twenty gallons are poured forth every minute from the top of the Knaresborough Cliff, and the beauty of the scene can only be appreciated by those who have stood upon the margin of those ‘stony waters’ and beheld the crystal fluid descend from above with metallic fall. | Subjects: | genre topography tree woman ruin horse cow table dog man river | Temporal: | 1746 | Source: | Government Art Collection | Creator: | Francois Vivares (Engraver) | Identifier: | http://www.gac.culture.gov.uk/work.aspx?... | Go to resource |
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