[WELL sb.1]
1. The place at which a spring breaks out of the ground; the head-spring or source of a stream or river.
1340–1. Durham Acc. Rolls (Surtees), 539. In structura unius domuncule supra le Welleheued, 23s. 6d.
13[?]. E. E. Allit. P., B. 364. Waltes out vch walle-heued, in ful wode stremez. Ibid., 428. To-walten alle þyse welle-hedez & þe water flowed.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XIII. iii. (1495), 441. Euery ryuer … spryngith out in welle heedes.
1574. Cal. Laing Charters (1899), 225. Vp the face of the hill to ane lang veit welheid onder the craigis.
1590. Spenser, F. Q., II. ii. 6. Great Dame Nature, from whose fruitfull pap Their welheads spring.
a. 1628. Preston, New Covt. (1629), 160. There would be different streames, there would be divers well-heads.
1832. Tennyson, Eleänore, 16. From old well-heads of haunted rills.
1838. Arnold, Hist. Rome, I. xi. 196. Their way home was over the hills of Alba, by the well-head of the water of Ferentina.
1886. Stevenson, Kidnapped, xxiv. 240. We … travelled on eerie mountains and among the well-heads of wild rivers.
b. Sc. A spring in a marsh or morass.
1816. Scott, Old Mort., xv. The charger on which he was mounted plunged up to the saddle-girths in a well-head, as the springs are called which supply the marshes.
1862. Whyte-Melville, Queen’s Maries, xxxi. The horse … had got bogged up to the girths in a well-head, as those particularly soft pieces of morass are called, which abound on the Scottish moorland.
1884. Speedy, Sport in Highlands, xvii. 299. Extensive unfrozen marshes, abounding in ‘well-heads.’
2. fig. The chief source or fountain-head of anything.
1542. Boorde, Dyetary, Pref. (1870), 226. I … beynge at the well-hed of Physycke [sc. at Montpelier].
1587. Golding, De Mornay, ii. 18. The Veynes are spred foorth throughout the whole bodie, howbeit from one welhead, that is to say from the Liuer.
1596. Spenser, F. Q., V. ix. 26. Or that he likened as to a welhed Of euill words and wicked sclaunders by him shed.
1606. Bryskett, Civ. Life, 42. Knowing that the well bringing up of children, was the spring or wel-head of honest life.
1638. Junius, Paint. Ancients, 309. We must suffer our understanding to be directed to the well-head of the history it selfe.
1654. Pagitt, Heresiogr. (ed. 5), 141. Oxford, and Cambridge, two Well-heads of Divinity.
1820. Hazlitt, Lect. Dram. Lit., 20. It was the spring, the well-head from which every thought and feeling gushed into act.
1842. Borrow, Bible in Spain, iii. 20. The Bible, which is the well-head of all that is useful and conducive to the happiness of society.
1854. Patmore, Angel in Ho., Betrothal, 15. As Poets of grammar, Lovers are The well-heads of morality.
1890. Spectator, 28 June. The County Council … had better endeavour to find some well-head of money which has hitherto remained untapped.
3. The top of a draw-well. Also a more or less elaborate structure erected over this.
1613. J. Saris, Voy. Japan (Hakl. Soc.), 133. At euery fiftie paces there is a Well-head, filled very substantially of freestone, with buckets for the neighbours to fetch water.
1891. Builder, 28 Nov., 403/1. Wrought-iron Well-head.
1908. W. C. Green, Old Cottages Surrey, 69. Fig. 102 shows one of these well heads with a rough roof over it.
1913. G. McN. Rushforth, in Eng. Hist. Rev., July, 553. The thoroughly characteristic Italian well-head of the tenth century in the Lateran cloister.
