Well, Wellhead Gear and Wellhouse is a Grade II listed building in the North Hertfordshire local planning authority area, England. First listed on 8 February 1988. Well and gear.
Well, Wellhead Gear and Wellhouse
- WRENN ID
- strange-cellar-rowan
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- North Hertfordshire
- Constituency
- Hitchin MP: Alistair Strathern (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 8 February 1988
- Type
- Well and gear
- Address
- Well, Wellhead Gear and Wellhouse, the Green, Preston
- OS grid reference
- TL 180 247
- Coordinates
- 51.90871, -0.28591
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The well, wellhead gear, and wellhouse were built in 1872 by the Darton family of Temple Dinsley, created during a summer when local ponds had dried up. The well is said to be 226 feet deep but is now capped off. The octagonal wellhouse is open at the sides and features a steep, pointed octagonal slate roof supported by eight stout oak posts, which are raised on concrete pads from an octagonal Yorkstone step.
The cast iron gear is arranged east-west over the top of the well. It includes a rectangular openwork moulded iron trestle with battered ends, and longitudinal bars at half height that support a lower axle. There is another axle near the top with a top member that sweeps up in a segmental curve. Moulded braces support the lower bar and intersect as cross-bracing to the upper panel. The mechanism features two large flywheels, each four feet in diameter, with handles at either end of the lower axle. A cog with 15 teeth engages a gear with 96 teeth on the upper axle, which also carries a flanged iron drawing pulley. Additionally, there is a larger gear with 60 teeth on the lower axle, the purpose of which is unclear. The roof is constructed from softwood and features a king-post design.
Local climate
Well, Wellhead Gear and Wellhouse sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 720 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 82% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 76% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 35 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 60% of listed buildings. Of these, 17 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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