Chamber: Drystone granite, about 0.8 m square and 0.8 m high
Listing: Grade II listed building 1170584 (28 October 1987); scheduled monument 1002616
Rapier: Bronze, found 1906, about 1200 to 900 BC
Not to be confused with: Fitz's Well, Okehampton Park (listing 4868)
Fice's Well is a spring about a mile and a half north of Princetown, on ground once used by the prison farm. A small granite chamber covers the spring, roughly 0.8 m square and 0.8 m high, with a slab roof. Across its open south side runs a lintel cut with the initials I.F. and the date 1568, read as John Fice or Fitz, with the I standing for J. Historic England lists the canopy at Grade II and schedules the well.
The circular wall around it, with steps to climb over, is thought to be much later; Legendary Dartmoor reports it as convict work of the 19th century. In the story, John Fitz and his wife rode in circles in a pixie-made mist until they found the spring. After they drank, the mist lifted and they saw they were near Rundlestone. The water was also said to cure sore eyes.
In 1906 a convict working on a road for the prison farm found a bronze rapier about 18 inches long, dated to roughly 1200 to 900 BC, a little under 400 yards from the well. The same surname is spelt Fitz, Fytz, Fice and Fize, and the same tale is told at Fitz's Well on Okehampton Park, which is a different place.
Dartefacts is a database of Dartmoor sites with far more close-up detail than we can show here, and it is the best place to go deeper. Dartefacts is free to use, and nobody has to pay to look things up. If you want more, a yearly subscription adds 10-figure grid references, map zoom down to 1:25,000 and lists to tick off the places you have visited, and it helps keep the site going. We would encourage you to subscribe.
Our Dartmoor doesn't track you and runs no adverts. We use one cookie to make the
site work, and some pages load videos, maps or optional social media panels from other sites, the panels only if you choose to show them.
