Remember When: Mystery hole found in Queen Street, Oxford, in 1973

After engineers and archaeologists were called, the hole turned out to be a freshwater well that no one knew existed.

The hole was then inspected, measured and photographed before the all-clear was given for it to be filled in.

Tom Hassall, director of the Oxford Archaeological Excavation Committee, said the well was almost certainly a remnant of Butchers Row, a shambles or row of shops which used to be in the centre of Queen Street from the Middle Ages up until the end of the eighteenth century.

Butchers Row's notorious crowded slaughterhouses led to much protest from the university, as the seventeenth century Oxford antiquarian, Athony Wood, recorded.

Mr Hassall said he was surprised at the find - 'as the road here was relatively shallow we didn't expect to find anything like this. It is quite an unusual feature'.

The well could have been shared by the shops at the end of the seventeenth century - when it was probably built - but it was possible others existed nearby.