NHER 39752 (Monument record) - Post medieval well

3 September 2003. Watching brief.
Revealed beneath south carriageway of coast road adjacent to kerb and immediately north of boating lake, following subsidence of road.
Curving flint wall, total length 800mm, immediately below thick tarmac.
Exposed down to 1.20m.
Cemented together but forms only a segment of a circle, broken to northwest.
Interior, not exposed, appeared to be full of sand beneath mass of mortared flint.
North face trench all sand but south face had various features filled in with different types of sand, impossible to plot accurately in the circumstances.
Much larger void to west; probably caused by the sand seeping into the well.
Cromer Museum stated there were once hotels in this area but this is contradicted by the Town Gardens Survey (see NHER 33461) which states area was first released for building in 1852, houses were proposed on this site but never built; a proposal of 1877 kept this area as communal gardens but the site remained undeveloped until the gardens and lakes were formed in the 1950s.
The structure appears to be a well but is undatable; does it indicate that some work was in fact done in 1852, or is it from older unrecorded settlement?
It was probably half destroyed by a new sewer to the north in the 1980s allowing the sand to seep in.
E. Rose (NLA), 6 September 2003.