Anyone know about wells and Victorian plumbing?

[Ian ParkinParticipant @ianparkin39383]

I live on a mid Victorian developed road most of the houses were built in 1865 or so.

a neighbour has just been clearing an area fairly close the back wall to install a wildlife pond and found some large heavy stones, upon lifting one she was surprised to find what looks like a well its about 1m dia built in bricks (all houses are stone) and full with clean clear water about 1.5 metres deep on pumping out the bottom is a clay type silt..

What could it be for? Is it a well if so how does the water get there as bottom end of garden is below the level of water.  There isn’t any pipe work visible..

 

Also a question all neighbours seem to ponder would these houses when built have internal plumbing both supply and drainage (1865) and also gas? For lighting heating?

my house had a nicely tilled cellar floor and a yorkshire range in the cellar we always assumed that was for a day maid…houses not grand enough for a live in servant we thought..

my house has a external soil stack on the front which goes down to foundation level then under the house and to a sewer at the bottom of the garden..so impossible to install after house built

other houses have internal soil stacks and are clearly installed under the cellar floor

anyone any input on all this?

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

When I was a kid my father was very proud of the well in the garden which was always full of clean water even in the driest of summers.  Then the water company came along and fixed a leaking pipe!

So maybe there is a mains leak filling it up?

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

1865 is before public water and sewage schemes became common, so not unusual for homes to have a well and earth closet.   The deeds to my son’s 1860 house shows it to be in a group that shared a well about 150 yards away.   The land around the well is partitioned into vegetable gardens, each with a small shed in which they disposed of their business. Highly inconvenient on a wet winter’s night, so everyone had a po under the bed!

As late as 1950 my grandfather collected excrement as fertiliser in the old fashioned way.   Great care was taken to separate male and female water, because adult female wee is full of hormones that spoil some reactions   When he was a young man urine was collected door to door because it was an important industrial chemical.   Stale urine, proper name lant, contains ammonia, so greasy wool off the sheep was washed in it.   Before Chemistry advanced and the discovery of Chile Saltpetre, urine was vital to the manufacture of gunpowder.  At one time the King had exclusive rights to all the nations excrement…

Ian’s well is probably filled from higher up, catching water flowing downhill below the the surface.   Wouldn’t drink it!  Wells were, and are, easily contaminated.  Many Victorians killed by Dysentery, Cholera, and lesser bugs, usually caused by excrement in the drinking water.  As the source for ground heat pump though…

Could be worse.  Bristol’s old coalfield is littered with long forgotten pit shafts and wells.  Wells of all sizes, with quite a few big ones dug for industrial purposes, mostly before regulation.   When the coal ran out they were covered in the cheapest way possible and abandoned.  A century later, the land was built on, so many homeowners learn about Green issues the hard way when a shaft or well is discovered today.  If proven to be a mine shaft, the Coal Authority picks up the bill.   If it’s a well, the home owner pays.  Many disputes because fixing a deep hole under a house can be extremely expensive and it’s hard to tell the difference between an early coal shaft and an early well.

Britain’s industrial heritage isn’t entirely cuddly!

Dave

[renardiere7Participant @renardiere7]

It maybe a water cistern rather than a well. Any sign of clay pipes running into it? They can be hard to see sometimes as they tend to be tucked under the capping. On the country estate I live on which is of similar but slightly later era has several cisterns, mostly around the stable yard and the more outlying buildings. The estate had its own water supply, piped over quite a distance to sand filtration beds but they were obviously very keen to store as much rainwater off the roofs as they could.

I live in the gardeners cottage in case anyone thinks I have delusions of grandeur!

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

My Grandparents house had a cistern built of brick under what we termed the scullery. It collected rainwater from the roof of the house and there was originally a hand pump to lift water to the sink. It was however quite large so I’m not suggesting your find is anything other than a well. Cisterns of the type I describe were quite common in the Forest of Dean which had a fairly high annual rainfall being on the west side of the UK.

[peak4Participant @peak4]

I’m wondering about cistern myself.
I’ll not include a screenshot, as I don’t wish to identify your house directly, but if you zoom in on this 1894  map, it may show something of interest.
https://maps.nls.uk/view/125651290

Then compare with the 1905 map
https://maps.nls.uk/view/125651293

No contours, but check out the bench marks for heights to determine possible water flow(s)

Bill

[DC31kParticipant @dc31k]

Drive a steel rod into the silt at the bottom. That will establish if there is a solid base within reach and could add weight to the cistern theory. If the rod does not go in far, use a wet vac to remove the silt and you will see the base construction.

[peak4Participant @peak4]

I’ve deliberately put the cursor in the wrong place here, but if you reposition accordingly for your own house, the town plan might be interesting

 

Bill

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

My family house has a shallow well down to the rock which is supplemented from the gutters. Village didn’t get a piped supply until 1935 when only a few houses subscribed so there were 3 communal taps to add to the two communal pumps and a ‘fairy hole’ where a small spring erupted on the green. We were above the village reservoir so had a special pipe off the pipes draining the bog into the reservoir. A new reservoir and treatment works came in the ’60s when we got mains water and fur in the kettle.
My sister’s current house built 1750 has a cistern shared between 3 cottages. One of her previous terraced houses built 1730 had no known well but the more recent ‘outhouse’ at the bottom of the garden was situated conveniently over the small stream which being a winterbourne may have been a little fresh in the summer. They may have taken their water from the stream before it reached the houses!

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Wells could definitely be a health hazard. My old mate Barry was taken very seriously ill as a child. The source of the infection was traced to the well being too close to the bullock yard which was infecting it with all kinds of nasties. Once the family realised they dug another further away.

[mark costello 1Participant @markcostello1]

Uncles house had a cistern along side the county road. They would get a slight salt taste during winter and lived with it. Then one year They started getting slightly sick.Could not figure it out, after many tests They tested the water and it had some of the wrong kind of bacteria in it. They opened the cistern up and found a rotten skunk it it. Problem solved.

Last year Mil got sick and told no one about it (98 years old). She had a teary eye for a month and it took 3 months to get Her to a Doctor. Doctor went on vacation and no others on call. When We finally got Her to a specialist She had the worst eye infection a University Hospital had ever seen. She did not want it treated as shots in Her eye hurt.

I believe it killed Her shortly after. The cause? Health department rules here state “no wells in pits.” They put theirs in a pit to save room in a closet in their house. Farmers started hauling liquid manure and it started spilling on the road above their house. Rules sometimes need followed.

[Craig BrownParticipant @craigbrown60096]

I have a similar, brick built, “well” in the back yard area of my early 20th century property. Approximately 6ft in diameter, 8ft deep. This originally collected rainwater from the downpipe, via underground clay piping. There was then an iron/steel pipe, 1.5″ or so diameter, that went from cistern into the scullery to feed a hand pump.

The cistern is still there, and although the water supply from the downpipe is now removed, it still fills with water, after heavy rainfall, percolating though the ground

[Ian ParkinParticipant @ianparkin39383]

So a cistern is an underground storage facility? A well fills with water from the water table?

many thanks Bill for the links to the maps i do have a full size 1904 os map displayed in the hall but its black and white only and doesn’t show the blue bits (wells/sisterns)

[Ian Parkin]

On Ian Parkin Said:

So a cistern is an underground storage facility? A well fills with water from the water table?

many thanks Bill for the links to the maps i do have a full size 1904 os map displayed in the hall but its black and white only and doesn’t show the blue bits (wells/sisterns)

The first link should also show where the stream used to be before they built the later houses; depending on heights, I wondered if that was piped to a cistern.
Did you get the town plan to show OK?
If not I’ll try and send you a working link via PM, but that doesn’t allow attached photos as I recall

Bill

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Wells are usually deeper than cisterns, and cisterns usually widen out underground.   Not always.  Could also be an old septic tank.  In a mining area, an air-shaft.   Maybe the entrance to a sewer or roofed-over water-way.  Difficult to tell which is which without exploring.   Hard to do if it’s been filled with junk and then flooded.

My mum lives in a village where the old guide book claimed a bottle-shaped underground chamber discovered in the 1950s was a gunpowder magazine built in 1745 in response to the Jacobite rebellion.  Unlikely – the nearest Army barracks was 20 miles away.  Could have been an ice-house, or for storing foodstuffs that needed to be protected from rats and insects.   Grain for the local brewery.

People love to romanticise.  Why not claim it’s a WW2 Stay Behind hideout?

Dave.

 

 

[old foolParticipant @old-fool]

Hi everyone.

When I was a child in the ’50s we lived in a country area, and always used well-water. We lived in 3 different houses till I was 7, and none had mains water or sewer. Just before we moved to the town, about 1955, the local council started sending a tanker to empty the toilet (a “bucket & chuckit” hardware shops of the time sold a specially shaped bucket for the job). Prior to that the garden was dug so far and left with a trench which the contents were tipped into and then another couple of rows of digging until the next emptying.

The well at our last country house was very deep, or it seemed when you’re 5. with a windlass and chain. No wall round it like you see in the fairy tales just a pair of rickety wooden lids! It supplied 4 houses and us kids were under instruction to KEEP AWAY. Not sure how much difference that made!

We did have mains electricity though many country areas didn’t. Some friends we used to stay with had oil lamps until nearly the end of the decade. So no telly and a battery radio. which you had to take the battery to a farm up the road, who had a generator.

I do lament the passing of the guzzunder though. especially when the cats are  wailing under the window. Nothing says f**** off quite like a pot full of p***s over the head. Wonder if the late queen kept one at Balmoral for when the piper kicked off

 

Bob

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Dave –

An ice-house is often identifiable by a small, usually central, drain in the floor; which was funnel shaped to aid draining the melt-water.

[larry phelan 1Participant @larryphelan1]

Anyone interested in Victorian plumbing ect should read a book called

The Great Stink of London. Should be available in your local library and it,s a great read.

Sad to say, the man who sorted it out is now forgotten.

[Andrew CrowParticipant @andrewcrow91475]

I haven’t forgotten him, his name was Joseph Bazalgette, a remarkable engineer. But as you say he probably never had the credit he deserved.

[Ian Parkin]

On 26 April 2025 at 12:45 Ian Parkin Said:

… she was surprised to find what looks like a well its about 1m dia built in bricks (all houses are stone) and full with clean clear water about 1.5 metres deep on pumping out the bottom is a clay type silt..

What could it be for? Is it a well if so how does the water get there as bottom end of garden is below the level of water.  There isn’t any pipe work visible..

 

Also a question all neighbours seem to ponder would these houses when built have internal plumbing both supply and drainage (1865) and also gas? For lighting heating?

…

Probably a well, but don’t bet the farm on it without further investigation.  People have many reasons for digging holes!  To add to the list, it might be a French Drain, keeping the basements dry by encouraging water into a soak-away.

Whether or not it’s worth digging a well depends on the geology underneath.  Usually taps into a waterlogged porous rock.  This diagram shows some of the possibilities:

Most traditional wells were dug in the “unconfined aquifer”, that is a porous rock such as limestone laying on top of an impervious layer, usually clay.   Water-table wells in the “unconfined aquifer” fill with relatively new surface water that percolates down from the surface.  The surface excess flows into the stream.  Though most water-table wells aren’t particularly deep, they might be.  Castles on hilltops often have very deep wells.

Well water will be clean provided the water took many years to filter into it.  Unfortunately, nature and man are both likely to fracture the rock, which allows dirty water to drain into the well, or the well might be fed from a nearby underground stream: dirty!

A well’s brick lining isn’t simply structural, it also keeps recent surface water out.  Covers needed to stop animals falling in and festering.   Wells had to be cleaned regularly because stuff grows in them and rots. In the country there’s space to separate earth closets and wells, but not in a town.    There, it became necessary to pipe clean water in, and to pipe sewage away.   At first sewage was just dumped into the nearest river or pumped out to sea.  Both cause havoc; it’s necessary to treat sewage before returning it to the environment.   Plenty of opportunity for ignorant or penny pinching opportunists to poison the wells, and they do!

The picture also shows Artesian wells, where water in a lower level is pressurised.   Might gush out, not needing a pump, or fill an ordinary well close to the top.   Deep water is millions of years old and biologically clean, though it will be mineralised – furry kettles!   Couple of problems with extracting it: the surface can subside cracking up all the buildings on top, and, deep water doesn’t last forever.

Underground water isn’t always friendly.   Some rocks dissolve in it creating caverns not far beneath the surface.  Eventually the roof collapses and creates a sinkhole.  I have family in Ripon near this house:

Piped water, gas, electricity, and sewage disposal took well over a century to spread.  In the sixties house adverts still highlighted “All Mod Cons” if the home had them, because so many older properties didn’t!

Dave

 

 

 

[larry phelan 1Participant @larryphelan1]

No Andrew, you are quite right, he did not.

[Andrew Crow]

On Andrew Crow Said:

I haven’t forgotten him, his name was Joseph Bazalgette, a remarkable engineer. But as you say he probably never had the credit he deserved.

Liverpool had a comprehensive sewage system years before London, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Newlands

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Personally I would say Bazalgette was fairly well known for an Engineer. I certainly seem to remember a Blue Peter episode that talked about him years ago. His name occurs in general conversation occasionally and there have been many programs describing the work he did. He is also acknowledged obliquely in most episodes of Rumpole of the Bailey when he orders his Chateau Thames Embankment cooking claret in Pomeroys wine bar at lunch.

😊

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