During the medieval period, the importance of the village well continued to grow. Wells were typically located in the center of the village, making them accessible to all residents.
Water is one of the essential ingredients of life on Earth and access to water is a human right recognised by the UN.
Throughout history people have found ingenious ways to access and tame this life sustaining liquid.
Wells, dating back thousands of years, have been used around the world to provide a steady supply of water to settlements, with some of the oldest examples of wells predating the pyramids.
Until recent centuries, wells were dug by hand, a physically strenuous and dangerous job. Meanwhile methods that seemed to mix the mystical and scientific were used to find groundwater sources in ancient times.
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Wells in the UK have a fascinating history – they have been gifted to the thirsty by Indian princes, and dug hundreds of metres into the earth by the poor and destitute.
While in a modern world, wells are still used by people across the world to access water, including in homes around Britain, many wells around the world may soon come under threat from dropping water tables and rising salinisation levels.
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However, one thing is for sure, the story of water can’t be told without including the story of the humble well.
How Were Wells Dug?
Up until the nineteenth century when machine drilling became a viable option for digging wells, building wells was a labour intensive and physically demanding process.
Wells were dug by hand, with people using shovels and other hand held tools to remove dirt, often by the bucketful, to create a well shaft that reached down to the water table. As dirt and debris was cleared, bricks or other materials used to line the interior of the well shaft were put in place.
Digging wells, particularly deep ones, could be incredibly dangerous and bracing was often needed to reduce the risk of collapses while the well was still under construction.
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Deep wells also offered the risk of injury and death from falling during construction. During the digging of the deepest well in the UK, at least one winchman, an individual who assisted in winching dirt and other debris out of the well shaft, fell to his death during construction efforts.
Finding Water
Various methods considering a range of factors have been developed around the world and across the generations for knowing where to dig wells.
In modern times, a mixture of expert knowledge and technology is used to determine the placement of new wells, but until recently, people didn’t have the luxury of relying on technology to determine the best well placements.
People read the landscape, searching for natural clues to determine areas that may be close to the water table.
Water dowsing, also called water divining or water witching, also emerged as a method to locate groundwater.
Often now considered a pseudoscience by scientific bodies, water dowsing involves using a Y shaped stick or rod, or a pendulum tool, to search for underground water or other substances.
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It is claimed that the tools move in response to groundwater, allowing water diviners to locate groundwater sources, and hence, determine the best spot for well digging.
While water dowsing has been around since ancient times and is sometimes still used in the modern world, it has come under criticism with claims that it is a highly inaccurate method of finding ground water.
The Village Well
The Industrial Revolution allowed for mass produce cast iron pumps. The village well started to be capped, instead of a bucket and pulley, a pump was installed. Furthermore, by the 1800s, public health concerns were growing.
Many traditional open wells were seen as potential sources of contamination, as they were often located close to cesspits and other sources of pollution. This led to efforts to improve sanitation and the quality of drinking water.
Pumps relied on drawing water from local aquifers through boreholes, which constituted a significant portion of the pump installation process.
For softer soils, a straightforward screw-shaped auger sufficed However, when sinking a borehole through stone, a more labor-intensive and costly method known as percussion drilling was necessary.
The initial village standpipe pumps were crafted from wood, which inevitably deteriorated over time. Later, lead was utilized. While lead’s malleability allowed for the creation of smaller pumps, it was an expensive material and a target for thieves who sought to melt it down for resale.
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This persisted despite the risk of being transported as the standard punishment for stealing village pumps. In the 1700s, cast iron, a relatively new technology, began to replace both wood and lead. Cast iron pumps were cost-effective to produce and far less susceptible to decay.
They quickly proliferated in villages that had previously been unable to afford pumps, making their way into homes, inns, farms, and public institutions like schools and hospitals.
Public pumps were more than just sources of water; they resembled today’s office water fountains as places where people congregated, exchanged information, shared news, and indulged in gossip. Some tasks were more conveniently carried out at the pump itself, rather than transporting the water back home or to businesses.
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Wealthier residents sometimes opted to have water delivered to them. The activity around the pump transformed it into a social as well as a practical resource, likely significantly altering the dynamics of village life once these pumps were installed.
The Oldest Wells in the World
Wells have truly ancient beginnings, and as they allowed settlements to be established in areas that weren’t immediately adjacent to a large surface water source.
Hence wells formed a key part of the development of civilizations. The oldest reliably dated well can be found on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. This simple well, reaching to a depth of eight metres, is believed to have been dug in 8400BC.
Other ancient wells are found across the Mediterranean and Middle East, with the oldest stone lined well located in Israel and dating back to around 7000 BC.
To put the age of these wells into perspective, they were dug at a time when mammoths still roamed the Earth, Doggerland was yet to sink beneath the waves, and the Pyramids of Giza wouldn’t exist until thousands of years in the future.
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The emergence of wells in Britain seems to date to the Neolithic period and quickly became installed in settlements around the ancient land.
Throughout much of British history, wells have formed a key part of the water infrastructure of the UK and have been one of the primary, sometimes only, ways in which the British population have had access to water.
Excavations from settlements dating back to the Anglo-Saxon times have, in many instances, revealed large quantities of wells. The number of wells discovered in close proximity suggests that in many settlements private wells were favoured over the building and use of communal wells.
390 Metres Down
The deepest hand dug well in the world can be found in the UK. The Woodingdean Water Well, found in Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, stretches a staggering 390 metres into the Earth.
Taking four years to complete, the well was finally finished on the 16th of March 1862. The Woodingdean Water Well was created to provide a reliable water source for a local workhouse.
To reduce the cost of digging the well, labour was sourced from the Dyke Road Workhouse. ln addition to reducing labour costs, forcing those at the workhouse to undertake this physically strenuous and dangerous task was seen as strategy to deter people from applying for poor relief at the workhouse.
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Initially, the Woodingdean Well was not intended to be as deep as it turned out to be. The original plans included a well 400 feet deep, 880 feet shallower than the finished well would come to be.
However when the well reached 438 feet two years into construction, water still hadn’t been found. It would take another two years of men working twenty-hours a day, using candlelight at night in dangerous, dirty and cramped conditions for water to be found.
It is said that on the fateful day that water was stuck, the well was so deep that it took the workers forty five minutes to climb the ladders out of the well shaft.
For those wanting to visit the site of the well today, it is now located just outside the Nuffield Hospital, Woodingdean, in Brighton and Hove.
The Maharaja’s Well
In the Chiltern Hills in the town of Stoke Row is one well with a rich story as to how it came to be. The story goes that in the 1860s, the funding for the building of the well came all the way from Maharaja of Benares in India.
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Supposedly, a story reached the Maharaja in India of a child that was beaten after drinking the last of the water in his household during a time of drought.
Unable to stand by, the Maharaja funded the building of a well in Stoke Row to provide reliable water access to the people of the area.
The well, which still exists today, is highly ornate, with a wrought iron pavilion and topped by a statue of a golden elephant.
The geology of the Chiltern Hills makes the area particularly vulnerable to water shortages during dry spells. The water table in the area is close to 100 metres below the surface and due to a soil composition with high clay deposits, ponds and streams tend to quickly dry up during periods without rain.
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The well that the Maharaja funded was no small feat, costing nearly £400, the equivalent of about £45,000 in today’s currency, and was dug by hand to a depth of 368 feet.
After taking a year to be completed, the well was finished in 1865 and provided a reliable source of water for the people of Stoke Row for the next seventy years.
Wells in a Modern World
While wells are still used around the world to access water, concerns have been raised as to the impact a changing climate will have on the reliability of wells.
In many part of the world, including parts of Britain, groundwater levels are forecasted to drop with an influx of hotter, drier weather.
If this happens, wells are likely to fail as the water level drops below the depth of the well, which causes a major issue for those relying on wells as their primary water source.
Increased risk of soil and groundwater salinisation also impacts the future effectiveness of wells. If groundwater sources fall victim to increased salinisation as a result of climate change and global warming, the wells they supply will become completely unusable as a fresh water source.
A World of Water
Dating back to at least 8400 BC wells are an ancient way of accessing water that is so effective it is still used today.
Wells were built around the world to provide a reliable water source to communities and formed a way for settlements to develop in areas not directly adjacent to large surface level water.
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While today, technology is used to help determine where a well should be dug and machinery is implemented to assist in the construction of a well, this wasn’t always the case with wells being dug by hand and a variety of ancient methods implemented to determine well placement.
From wells gifted by Maharajas to those dug by the poor at depths reaching over 300 metres, Britain has a strong history of well building.
While in the modern world, wells may be under threat from the impacts of a changing climate, they form a part of humanity’s story and demonstrate a physical link to the importance of protecting the world’s water.
