Springs & wells

By David V Clarke

A way of life for many villages was transformed when, at the end of the 1960’s, most houses were at long last linked to a mains water supply, while at the same time the sewage plant came into operation. In effect this largely ended the dependence of many on domestic or public wells and springs for drinking water and the habit of collecting rain water to cover other uses; nor were the hand pumps, maintained by the Parish Council, any longer necessary when some public taps replaced them. As this occurred less than thirty five years ago, a number of older residents still have memories of the way things were when springs, wells and pumps were in regular use.

Some recall the cool freshness of water drawn from a well. Others have spoken of the habit of leaving an empty pail below a dribbling pipe, protruding from a spring, in a field edge bank in the morning and collecting it full on the way home. Others say there were social benefits in using public pumps or dip-wells in meeting friends and neighbours and catching up with news. However, the preciousness of water in a dry season could also test patience, if your neighbours engaged in a big wash or a deep bath and it left little water for you and your family. Again, it is recalled how older people could keep an eagle eye on the wells and pumps, so that any youngster muddying the water, putting themselves at risk or just pumping the water out for fun, could well find themselves corrected! There could be problems, too, when the pump failed to work, or when the water was cloudy or tasted off, or when Rural District Council notices disrupted your practice with notices saying “this water must be boiled before drinking!” We should also not forget the time and energy involved in the drawing and carrying of water, especially for those dwellings near the top of Common Hill or those who lived well down Hawkers Lane using the pump at the bottom of Chimney pitch, for water is not a light commodity!

While, however, most of the village were dependent on drawing water from private or public wells or springs, a Mr. John Watkins, who once lived in Cassiobury, and ran there a Grocery and Bakery, and was a dealer in Dry Goods, and later was a Church Warden and in 1902 gave his address in the County Directory as Whiterdine Place, brought something of a change. In 1892 this same Mr. Watkins, who was a bit of a local entrepreneur in business, land and property, made a request to the Vestry: It was “To be allowed to bring the overflow water from the Highland Well by pipes down the village as far as the school premises” and “to extend this provision to other houses”. This development of what was a gravity feed system was allowed. At first it supplied some two shops and nine houses, with the tap for such water generally found in the cellar, where some it seems installed the family bath. In relation to this, in the drought of 1952, some remember when the main feeder pipe was blocked, and all taps were requested to be left open and a force pump applied to the system. It produced in one receptacle green sludge, leeches and a frogs leg before the proper flow was resumed!

By 1959 some fifteen houses and two shops, with a farm and nursery, all used this well pipe supply. When the water level in the well dropped, this created the crisis which was added to by the need for more water for new houses fin brought the mains supply to village a decade later. Long before and up to that time there were many places where springs and wells were available for private or public use. One spring used to be found under the trees by the road a little down from Nash Cottages. This some times needed de-clogging of fallen leaves. There was also a well at bottom of Ferry Lane where a force pump lifted the water to Ferry Cottage, whose overflow went into brook. There was also a spring below Nursery Cottage, while lower down Common Hill Lane there was Highland Well (already referred to) which was a dip-well. Some of its bricks and stones : remain, though now within the brook. There was also a well at Haugh Wood Gate, as well as on many farms. In addition there were two special places where pumps for public use were available, a though now defunct, still stand a memorial to the past. The oldest of these pump sites is the corner of Woolhope Road, where an engraved stone explains the occasion of its erection “by public subscription to comrnemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee on June 20th 1897”. The site was given by Fownhope Court to the Parish. The original pump, now long gone, was largely made of wood. It was known as a Tree Pump. There is information in the County Library of a family in Lugwardine by the name of Barber who, for four generations made such pumps and John Gill has sketched a photograph of the auguring of such a pump by Thomas Barber some time in the last quarter of the l9th Century. Certainly if the pump was not made in the village it is likely to have been made by the Barbers, who were renowned as local pump makers. Such pumps were normally made according to the depth of the welt out of one, two, or three trees, usually larch or elm, felled for convenience near the site where needed. Trees of 12 to 14 inches in girth were used, with each tree some ten to twelve feet long. The wood was squared off leaving a larger thickness at what would be the top of the pump; then a two man cross-handled auger was used, with a lot of grease, to slowly bore what was eventually a four and a half or five inch shaft through the length of the trees required. In the top section, the shaft through the other trees need to be made watertight, with lard and suet. A hole for a spout was made and a cut for the handle which, when used to raise a leather surrounded wooden valve or “bucket” created the vacuum to draw the water to the spout. Such pumps were said to have the benefit of keeping well water sweet and not cracking with the frost.

There was also a fine shallow, but long, stone trough by the Jubilee pump when erected to which was also attached a chained drinking cup. Problems, alas, occurred with this pump some sixteen years later on, after which it was replaced with a cast iron pump with a long handle weighted at the end. It seems this pump was removed in the early 1950s and that in 1970 the Parish Council accepted an old pump from the matron of Penkelly Nursing Home, Lugwardine and a trough from Mr. Williams mark the place as an old pump site. The Trough was planted with bulbs the following year.

The second wooden pump can still be seen in the Pump House, later erected at the bottom of Chimney Pitch on Common Hill. This and the site was given to the Parish by Mrs. Higgins of Melrose House in 1910 and because of the Coronation of King George the V th the following year is known as the Coronation Pump. At the beginning of the first World War discussions took place about it being roofed over and whether this should be in the form of a thatch, rubberoid roofing, or even asbestos. Eventually, Messrs Stone Brothers housed the pump in 1916, repaired and improved it in 1936, with a further repair and re-roofing taking place in 1961. Later when the pump became defunct, the well beneath it was barred and padlocked as it still is.

Thus these two sites remind us of an age when the fetching and carrying of water made people intimate with nature and daily exercise, yet vulnerable to mechanical problems, and seasonal variations of supply. Doubtless this made them more conscious than us, in our take it for granted world of convenience, of their acute dependence on water for survival and life.

Today, one of the ironies of Global Warming bringing us more damp and rain, is that in thirty one countries of the world hundreds of millions of people, mostly among the poorest of the world are suffering the reverse in the form of acute drought, with allied problems in the supply of safe and clean water. All credit therefore to those development programmes, church organisations, aid agencies, voluntary groups, schools, businesses and individuals, some of them local, who recognises the struggles of others. and even now provide ways of helping them with wells, and pumps, and pipes, and other way, of supplying, securing and conserving water!