A room in which a wellway could be found. (Thought I'd better put that in in case you'd skipped the title.) In Series 1 and 2, these rooms were the only way for a dungeoneer to descend from one level to the next, and conformed to three standard designs with colour variations. Series 3 and 4 featured wellway rooms on Level 1 only (with one exception: Team 9 of Series 3 descended to Level 2 via a trapdoor). It was during Series 4 that the look of wellway rooms varied the most, as a selection of different photographic backgrounds were used. (There was even an outdoor wellway in one quest.) None was seen from Series 5 onwards, during which Elita explained that the Opposition had blocked up all the wellways.

The rocky, spartan appearance of most wellway rooms was not only at odds with the neat, smooth construction of the well-heads, but also tended to be deceptive, as there was usually a final danger or challenge before the dungeoneer could access the well. These included the following:
- Darkness. Team 3 of Series 1 was the first to properly encounter a wellway room, but found it impossibly dark, and had to use a spell (FLARE) to light the room. The team's second wellway room visit presented the same problem, which they solved with the spell LANTERN. Season 2 Team 4 made use of a magic candle. Team 10 of Series 3 used FLARE. Team 12 of Series 2 had no magic to stave off the encroaching darkness in their Level 2 wellway room, and perished as a result. It's also worth noting that Knightmare's very first quest ended in a darkened chamber that could well have been a wellway room. (See picture; a lamp would have lit it, but dungeoneer David hadn't taken it from the clue room. Thus, we cannot be absolutely certain that the room contained a wellway.)

- Guard. This sub-topic is large enough to be worthy of a separate entry: Wellway guards.

- Lock. The opening of the Level 1 wellway in Quest 12 of Series 2 was blocked by a lock. Fortunately, the team had a key with which to remove the lock.
- Absent wellway. Sometimes the wellway was simply not visible in the wellway room. Team 6 of Series 1 remedied this with a WELL spell from Folly. Team 9 of Series 2 conjured a wellway by adding a bag of 'Small Change' to Mildread's cauldron; in the cases of Teams 3 and 5, Mildread conjured the well herself. Team 2 of Series 3 had a wellway conjured for them by Mrs. Grimwold, Though dungeoneer Cliff had to augment Mrs. G's rhyming incantation with a series of actions in order to complete the magic. Team 6 of Series 3 needed to call out letters to disperse a panel puzzle that was blocking their view of the wellway (and various holes in the floor). Team 7 of Series 3 were supposed to draw a wellway into existence on paper provided, but had no crayon with which to do so.
Occasionally, wellway rooms provided something useful to teams in addition to the well itself, i.e. items of food or a piece of their quest object. Sometimes the room contained a portal, through which the dungeoneer may have entered, but the wellway remained the only viable exit.

Wellway rooms did mark the demise of several quests. The teams and their killers were: Team 4 of Series 1 (Gibbet), Team 7 of Series 2 (Cedric), Team 12 of Series 2 (fatally low Life Force), Team 7 of Series 3 (Grimwold). And if my earlier suggestion about the dark room with Team 1 of Series 1 is correct, then the wellway room has the distinction of being Knightmare's first 'deathplace'.

The artwork used for Series 3's Level 1 wellway room was later the basis for the Level 2 clue room seen in the 2013 YouTube Geek Week episode of Knightmare.

The gamebooks Can You Beat The Challenge? and The Labyrinths Of Fear include wellway rooms too.

Scans by David Rowe of his Series 1-3 wellway room artwork can be found on his website.

[Earlier versions: 2013-08-08 17:35:10, 2006-07-31 18:46:52]

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