‘Remarkable escape’ as woman who can’t swim falls down well

Denise Brooks, who never learned to swim, was trying to free a water pump on Monday when she slipped.

Sitting with her husband Mike, 63, in their picture-perfect garden in Abbots Morton, Worcestershire, yesterday, Mrs Brooks said she feared the worst when she lost her footing and plummeted towards the bottom of the pitch- black well.

She said: “It happened so quick. One minute I remember seeing the wall of the well and the next minute I’m just plunging into the water. That was the most frightening part and it must only have been a few seconds. It was frightening being in the water, knowing you can’t swim, and thinking are you going to come back up again?”

Mr and Mrs Brooks had been pumping water out of the well in their garden and into the pond because the water level had dropped and they wanted their ducks to be able to get onto a ramp in the pond safely.

When they were trying to pull the pump back up out of the well it got stuck and Mrs Brooks decided to go down into the well to untangle it, as she had done several times before.

Mr Brooks, who was watching from the top, said he clicked into “calm mode” as soon as he realised what had happened and it was when he shouted down to his wife to see if she was all right that she said “give me a couple of minutes” so she could try to calm herself down.

An ambulance service spokesman said she had had “a remarkable escape”.

“It’s actually really nice to leave the lady at home feeling relief that she was at home with her husband in a comfortable environment and not left alone because obviously when she came out of the hole she wasn’t expecting to see 35 to 40 people standing at the top relieved to see her.”