This dropping well, or petrifying spring, rises at the foot of a
limestone rock, at an inconsiderable distance from the bank of the river
Nidd. The spring, after running about sixty feet, divides, and spreads
itself over the top of the rock, whence it trickles very fast, from
thirty or forty places, into a channel hollowed for the purpose, as seen
in the cut, each drop producing a musical kind of tinkling, probably
owing to the concavity of the rock, which, bending in a circular
projection from the bottom to the top, occasions its brow to overhang
about fifteen feet. This rock, which is about thirty feet in hight,
forty-eight in length, and from thirty to fifty in breadth, started, in
the year 1704, from the common bank, and left a chasm, from five to nine
feet wide, over which the water passes by an aqueduct formed for the
purpose. It is clothed with evergreen and other shrubs, which add
greatly to the beauty of this very interesting scene.
[Illustration: DROPPING WELL AT KNARESBOROUGH.]
The water is said to abound with fine particles of a nitrous earth,
which it deposits, but when in a languid motion only, and leaves its
incrustations on the leaves, moss, &c., which it meets with, in
trickling thus slowly through the cavities of the rock. This spring is
estimated to send forth twenty gallons of water in a minute. Here are to
be seen pieces of moss, bird’s nests with their eggs, and a variety of
other objects, some of them very curious which have been incrusted or
petrified by the water.