Spring House - Ruin - Taffs Well, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales.
N 51° 32.687 W 003° 16.288
30U E 481175 N 5710444
Ffynnon Taf Warm Spring. The water comes up from deep underground & is warmed by Geothermal heat. The well is housed in a small stone Victorian building, built in mid 1800s, in ruin by 1914. located in Taff's Well, Rhondda Cynon Taff, South Wales.
Waymark Code: WMWEZ3
Location: South Wales, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 08/25/2017
Views: 1
Taff's Well - The average temperature at Taff's Well water, 21.6 °C is over 10 °C warmer than the average groundwater temperature of 11.3 °C in Wales.
The well enclosure known as the Spring house, is open during the Summer months from 10am to 4pm.
There is an audio playback device inside the building, speaking in Welsh & English giving the history of the Well going back to Roman times.
The Spring house was built in Victorian times c1850, disused & in ruin by 1914. Reopened in 1930, damaged by flood in 1950 in a state of disrepair & decay until 1990, with further refurbishment & state of the art lighting & sound in 2015.
"The well building fell into disrepair at the beginning of World War I, and in 1929 the Taffs Well villagers decided to repair the well and it re-opened in 1930 complete with a small swimming pool. It was around this time that the famous travel writer H.V Morton visited the well dedicating several pages of his 1932 book to the well. A large flood in the 1950s caused the pool, and well, to fall into disuse once again. In 1978 the wells waters were used to rescue the village bowling greens from drought. It was not until the 1990s that a redevelopment of the area was undertaken by "Rhondda Cynnon Taff Council".
Text Source: (
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From a PDF file titled: Waters from the deep - Natural Environment Research Council, Website:
"A short train journey from Cardiff, hidden away in a small dilapidated Victorian stone building, is perhaps one of Wales’ most unusual natural wonders. Many people will have heard of its name, ‘Taff’s Well’, which is also, and by no coincidence, the name given to the village in which it can be found. Taff’s Well is the only thermal – or warm water well in Wales, and is one of only a handful to occur in the UK, the Roman Bath hot springs being the most famous example.
A 5,000 year journey So what makes these waters unique? Primarily it is the temperature: bubbling to the surface, the water maintains a constant 21 oC, twice that of a ‘normal’ spring that you may encounter on a walk in the Welsh countryside, but still less than the 45oC you could expect at Bath. Carbon-14 isotope dating suggests that the rain which feeds the well fell at least 5,000 years ago, at a time when the Welsh population lived, at best, in huts, and brown bears roamed the forests. Rainwater falling somewhere along the heads of the valleys moves slowly underground, via cracks and fissures in the bedrock. The waters then flow to a depth of several hundred meters, moving southwards under the coalfield and travelling just 5m each year. It is here, deep down below the South Wales Valleys, that the water gains its temperature from the natural geothermal gradient of the earth’s crust. Somewhere near Taff’s Well the deep water finds a pathway, perhaps a geological fault, which allows the waters to return to the surface for the first time in over 5,000 years." Text Source: Waters from the Deep, NERC.