Antique French Limestone Well

An antique French stone wellhead in limestone, square in plan, with a thick oxidized iron lid still sitting on top. The walls are heavily pitted and weathered in ash gray, charcoal and pale beige, with small clusters of moss in the sheltered hollows. The interior is a different thing altogether: smoothly and cleanly hollowed, in contrast to the rough outside. The lid has gone a deep rust orange.

It measures 35 inches wide, 35 inches deep and 29 inches high. It is a French piece, 18th or 19th century by type, and the iron lid came with it. The block is heavy and is set with a forklift; the lid lifts separately.

A stone wellhead of this size works as the central water feature of a minimalist courtyard, as a reflecting basin set in a bed of raked gravel, or as the object at the end of a long sightline down a garden. Dark tumbled basalt around the base lightens the stone; blackened steel edging nearby picks up the iron. This antique wellhead has sold. Wellheads with their ironwork come to us less often than troughs, but they do come; ask and we will send what is current.