Just found an old Well

[talisman]

In my back yard this afternoon and I had always wondered why there was a large slab amongst the crazy paving, became even more curious when water disappeared down a crack at the side.

Out came the Crow-bar with much huffing an puffing with encouragement from the dog .... typical Patterdale wants to know what's under everything .. finally lifted and found an old well.

Top is 18 inches Diameter opening out to about 3 foot diameter. Shame its filled. These terrace houses were built in 1890's so can only assume it was dug then.

knowing nothing about wells, it would be good to open this up as a supply of water for the garden etc

any ideas???

will try and get some pics up

[MR GUS]

Ask ye village elders...

[talisman]

Unfortunately there is no one local who can remember, next door neighbours garage used to be a stables until about 1920's so can only assume that this was a shared well.

What I am really after is some advice on how to get the well operational, getting long in the tooth I do not fancy jumping in to start clearing all the rubble

+

I do not want to suddenly disappear 30 foot. 60 foot or even 90 foot if all the rubble is precariously lodged on a few old timbers

[renewablejohn]

Are you in a coal mining area. Might not be a well but a coal mine ventilation shaft which has been capped. If so get expert advice from coal board geologist.

[talisman]

Are you in a coal mining area. Might not be a well but a coal mine ventilation shaft which has been capped. If so get expert advice from coal board geologist.

I had not thought about that, fortunately there is definitely no mining activity here (Petersfield Hants)

[solar_cambridge]

on that photo it appears to have water around the edges? is it a high water table area? Doesn't look to be lined either.

Could be an expensive project but then its 'free' water for your toilets and washing machine( you could even meter it and sell to your neighbours for half the cost of what your regular supplier charges  ). To clear that you'd want to build a derrick over the hole with a winch arrangement so you could be suspended in a harness should the worst happen and also to lift out the spoil. Know any pot holers in the area who you could bribe to do the dirty work?

Before you dug it all out you could consider lining the well with new bricks as you descend. Thats how they lined wells in the olden days, top down.

[Baz]

It seems odd that they would go to the trouble of filling almost to the surface then build a complicated neck with lots of bricks so it looks like that was original and it was perhaps fitted with a pump rather than being open topped.  Many wells were not really wells which would be expensive but cistern's fed from the roof drains so you might find incoming pipes a couple of feet down. A local historian / library with old maps might show other wells that you could check. As I recall you are in a valley bottom so the water table is probably quite high. You could look at the infill in more detail to determine where it came from. It looks like they just wanted to get rid of some rubbish rather than fill it in otherwise they jwould have gone to the top so it might be the equivalent of the remains of a shed or wall.
One of these days I must investigate my own well, capped probably in the twenties when the village built a little reservoir, but should be quite shallow as bedrock is only about 10 ft down.

[billi]

... It looks like that there is a pipe  coming in 2 " ?  and feeds liquid into it

[Iain]

Hi
Could it be a soakaway?
Iain

[rogeriko]

Dont forget in those days there were no sewers it could well be an old cesspit, wouldnt want to drink the water from that. Here in Greece most country houses still have a soakaway for the dirty water, it has to be at least 20 meters from the nearest well.

[biff]

hello talisman,
               the best thing to do, is to fill it in with good clean rubble and put a good strong cap over it,then forget you ever saw it.
    my experiences with these land mines was that they always ended up costing money.i opened one in tranmere in birkenhead which was full of cinders,it turned out to be a cess pit,with vaulted roof and rendered walls8ft wide by 12 ft long,another i opened ,was a collapsed ventalition shaft,then another i got involved in ,just off gillingham high street in kent was a dene hole which opened up into a massive bottomless underground cavern,people would go in ,but not come out,
 another more fearsome one was in weston street in strood near rochester in kent,this particular one was very well documented, it hard to believe these things exist but i doubt if there is any other type of construction that can send shivers down my spine like that can.
                                                                                                             biff

[Contadino]

Would the Land Registry hold information on whether it is actually a well (as opposed to a cess pit/soakaway)?  That would be my first port of call.  If it's a well, it's a valuable resource and worth restoring, so I'd get a surveyor to come and give you an appraisal of the work involved.

[Stuart]

a post digging spade should get you down quite a bit without having to get in there, you only need to go down as far as a few feet below the water table. looks damp in there already so might not be much work.

[wesnet]

It depends on where in Petersfield you are but south of the Winchester road, with two large streams running through area, I would suggest it would be a maximum of twenty feet deep. It is unlikely that the land registry would have details of a sealed well but Petersfield historical Society would be worth contacting as they may have access to old maps of your area. I remember visiting relatives in the Petersfield area in the late 1950's and their well wasn't very deep as I remember drawing water from it for the house, with a bucket on a short rope.

John
(Horndean Hants)

[Mankysteve]

Pm me your postcode  I've got access to historic maps.