THE Red Well at Barnard Castle has recently gone on the market for £625,000. It’s a nice stone pub, on the road out past Glaxo, but how did it get its name?

The answer lies a little further north on the B6278, which drops down to the golf course and then crosses a little beck. Beside this bridge – Harmire Bridge – an unsignposted footpath leads into a field on the east, where an old sign on the gate warns you to beware of a bull.

READ FIRST: THE RED WELL AT BARNARD CASTLE FOR SALE FOR £625,000

The Red Well, Harmire Road, Barnard Castle, is on the market with SavillsHowever, there’s nothing more terrifying in the field than a few sheep.

This was once the Town Moor. According to 13th Century charters, townspeople will allowed to graze their animals here, or to gather materials to thatch their hovels or to burn on their fires, or to cut peat, either for fires, possibly to make smoke-cured bacon.

By the 18th Century, though, fewer people were subsisting, or curing bacon, and the Town Moor became overgrown.

In the 19th Century, a Barney physician, Dr George Edwards, weaved it into his plan to get the townspeople out healthily walking. As a response to the town’s squalor which led to the 1849 cholera outbreak, Dr Edwards laid out at his own expense the paths and bridges in Flatts Wood, beside the Tees, which still compose a beautiful walk to this day.

One of his paths wound its way up the steep sided valley of the Percy Beck, up to Harmire Bridge and onto the Town Moor.

The Red Well in its enclosure, with the seating area abovePerhaps he realised that this walk needed a focal point, because he developed a spring that splooshed out onto the Town Moor. He set it in an enclosure 22 yards square in which there was a little stone basin for the water and an attractive roofed seating area for visitors.

As the water splooshed out, it turned the stone red, due to its mineral make-up, and so the destination got its name.

The Red Well, Barnard CastleDr Edwards suggested, quite cautiously, that drinking the water might bring health benefits, and he added with a certainty which suggests he had tried some himself: “Its valuable laxative quality has, I know, been ascertained.”

A sign on the stone seat says that the well was taken over by the town council in 1852.

This was a time when lots of places, from Shotley Bridge down to Gainford, Croft and Dinsdale, were profitably promoting their waters as health-giving, so perhaps this was Barney’s attempt to cash in on the spa phenomenon.

The seating area at the red well, Barnard Castle

The railways carried customers to the spa resorts, and in 1854, permission was given to build a railway from Darlington to Barnard Castle. When it opened in July 1856, it came within walking distance of the Red Well.

Soon after, we would guess, the pub was built near the level crossing – was it named as a selling point to encourage railway passengers to stay there and visit the well?

Today, there is still a well trodden path across the sheep fields to the Red Well, although the gently gurgling water no longer looks red. The stone enclosure is tidied up once a year by the town council.