The Mansion House Well

This is probably one of the oldest structures in Greenock.  It is the old Mansion House Well and now is located in the (appropriately named) Well Park in Regent Street, Greenock.

There's a date of 1629 on the well along with the initials HH.  It is thought that this may commemorate the marriage of the local laird, John Shaw (1597-1679) with Helen Houston.  On the other side of the well are the initials IS - probably for John Shaw.  There are flat plaques on the other sides of the well, but they are too eroded to make out what they once contained, but perhaps were the arms of the Shaw and Houston families.  

The well is beautifully constructed with four stone pillars with a pyramidal shaped covering and it is thought that there once would have been a stone ball at the apex.  The well once stood in the grounds of the Mansion House which was home of the Shaw family.  After uniting through marriage with the Stewarts in the 1750s, the family chose to live at Ardgowan.  The mansion house became the estate office and parts of it were rented out.  In the 1850s Sir Michael Shaw Stewart gifted the garden land to be used as a park by the people of Greenock.  The house was demolished in 1886 to make way for the extension of the railway line to Gourock by the Caledonian Railway. 

John Shaw (Elder) (Wester Greenock and Finnart) succeeded to the estate after his father, James Shaw's death in 1620.  His mother was Margaret Montgomerie.  John Shaw and his wife Helen Houston had a son, Sir John Shaw who married Jean Mure and a daughter Margaret Shaw who married Alexander Stewart, 4th Lord Blantyre.

During his time as laird, in 1635 in the reign of Charles I, John Shaw (sometimes written Schaw) was granted a Charter under the Great Seal which meant that Greenock became a Burgh of Barony.  It granted the right to hold a weekly market and two fairs annually.  Greenock still has a holiday in July known as "The Fair" and used to have a winter fair in November.  The Charter also conferred the right to elect a number of inhabitants to run the town and keep order.  The Charter was ratified by Parliament in 1641 and was an important part of Greenock's history and development.  John Shaw (Elder) was described by George Williamson as "a man of high culture and taste" (Old Greenock, 1888).  

Mansion House, Greenock

While the mansion house may have gone, at least we still have this little well to remind us of a part of Greenock's early history.