Ebbing and Flowing Well

The Ebbing and Flowing Well is a well whose precise location is now uncertain, but known to be within Derbyshire, within the Peak District. Its peculiar quality, recorded by writers over many centuries, is that its waters ebb and flow with the tide, notwithstanding the well's being far from the coast. It is one of the Seven Wonders of the Peak.

The well is described by Thomas Hobbes in his poem De Mirabilus Pecci as being perhaps a mile from the Eldon Hole, another of the Seven Wonders (though this distance may be poetic licence), and that:

... a Fount doth rise.
From the low caverns of a grassie hill;
With double mouth it's waters gushing still.
Which since th' admir'd flux o'th' greater Sea
Doth by report in its small Channel play,

It is accepted that the well no longer ebbs and flows. Two locations at least claim to be the original Ebbing and Flowing Well:

• A well on Manchester Road in Tideswell (53°16’56"N, 1°46’42"W, or 53°16’55"N, 1°46’40"W)
• A dried well at Barmoor Farm, east of Chapel-en-le-Frith (53°18’51"N, 1°52’29"W)

Daniel Defoe visited the well in Tideswell and pronounced it "A poor thing indeed to make a wonder of". Hobbes had been more impressed by the well he was shown, though only after waiting so long for it to perform its transformation that he had begun to ride off, until called back by the sound of rushing waters that filled and overflowed the well. Neither believed the well to be connected to the sea: Hobbes believed it was the bursting of airlocks in subterranean channels and Defoe the effect of wind blown through channels.

It is said in Tideswell that the well ceased to ebb and flow when nearby diggings broke the channels feeding the well, and that at Barmoor when navvies diverted an underground river while digging the Dove Holes Tunnel.