Crews to preserve abandoned well found under Savannah farmers market site

SAVANNAH, Tenn. — The discovery of a 200-year-old well stopped construction of the River City Farmers Market in Savannah this summer while construction crews figured out what to do with it.

Community members were so intrigued by the discovery, they pushed to save the well. City Manager Tom Smith says the city was able to find a way to do it.

“If it had been five or six feet to the north, I would’ve had to go ahead and fill it because the slab would’ve been in its location,” he said.

Crews are building a retaining wall around the well to incorporate it into the design of the farmers market.

“It’s brick lined, and they didn’t use mortar in between the bricks, so that makes it very fragile as far as the structure itself,” he said.

The construction crews are having to put supports around the bricks to hold it together until it can be displayed.

“We don’t want it to collapse at this point,” Smith said.

So, construction crews have worked around it. “We’ve been careful trying to do any of the heavy work around it, keeping a lot of the heavy equipment away from it,” he said.

Crews also plan to place a sheet of glass over the top of the well. “So people can look down in the well. But then again, you know there’s always going to be someone that’s going to want to try to go look closer in it,” he said.

Smith also said the construction for the River City Farmers Market is ahead of schedule, even after the discovery of the well.

The original deadline for the project was February 2019, but they expect to have it done by December.