Finding and opening up a Victorian water well

Welcome to my channel. Most videos I upload are night vision, infrared astronomy and UFO hunting related. Here I wanted to share my well excavation experience with my viewers. Part 2 can be viewed here kzbin.info/www/bejne/fHWQmpKujJeIh8k I have started a playlist for my water well and water cistern videos here kzbin.info/aero/PLgwPexT3uFvS7R9qI9cE_KD3S3f9QMl7q Thank you to everyone who has liked and subscribed to my videos.

[@paultreadaway9950]

Last August (2022) I decided to investigate the story of a possible Well under a wooden decking that I'd put down several years ago in my garden. I took a chainsaw to the decking and dug a trench. I located a big section of concrete that I'd not found when building the decking. Sure enough after a bit more digging and poking at the odd brick the crowbar went into nothingness and a torch revealed a brick lined Well. It has been filled to within Ten feet of the surface with soil, the odd brick and ash from the cottage's fire along with many a bottle and the odd rusty bucket. Once I'd found the Well (and having already decided to use it should I find it), I did what we all do when wanting to know how to do something and I put into KZbin search 'How to restore a Victorian Well'. Bingo! I found this fantastic video. It has helped me to research the subject and given me inspiration. I am currently down to 20 feet after two days of digging and hope to crack on more now that I am free from work at weekends. Many thanks for posting this video and for your inspiration 'deja vu'. Paul from Welford up the road from Brixworth. (Work at Sywell on noisy old flying machines).

Hi Paul, that’s a great find and I’m glad your getting it cleaned out, its a great project to undertake. Hope your lucky enough to have an old pump still bolted to the timber supports and maybe you’ll find an old Brixworth council sign thrown in for good measure. I know Welford very well and know of several wells and cisterns there that have have been spared being used for household waste. keep us updated on your progress.

[@paultreadaway9950]

@ Will do. I Plan to spend this coming weekend working on it. No signs of any pipework or pump yet. Did find two Enamel painted shop signs within the concrete capping. I know of one other Well that was filled in further up the Street from me and another that I remember seeing inside a property (In the Kitchen if I remember correctly). You are welcome to find me down the Wharf for a Pint !

[@tommy..980]

Cool my wife and I live on a farm that has a 30ft brick lined well and it’s our only water supply we use it for everything from showers, washing clothes, to our drinking water!!! And it keeps a even 13ft water level!!! Never has gone dry

That has a good head of water, it’s great you can be self sufficient too.

[@zjzozn]

Brilliant ⭐️ I have a capped well & always thought about lifting the cap to see what’s under it.

That’s great, you should have a look.

[@jys160]

What a great find and heritage for your property.

It was an explorers dream come true.

[@MrOldhoot]

Thanks, that was a fascinating insight into well construction, I never realised there was such a thing as a 'well brick'.

Thanks for watching. The construction of water water wells truly was an amazing skill.

[@serum2685]

Totally how we doing good this morning thanks I'll purchase the entire estate

[@d22matt]

So cool... What a brilliant restoration job 👍

Thanks VRS Matty

[@NotSoCrazyNinja]

*Well*, that's dedication, lol. I would do the same thing if in the same situation, except I'd have the water tested to see if it was closed due to contamination.

It didn't really get closed. Mains water arrived in the village in the 1930's and was still being used as water for vegetable allotments in the 1960's. Eventually it was used as a landfill site for everyone's rubbish.A friend of mine distilled 25 lts last year which he thoroughly enjoyed drinking. I even had a few glasses myself and survived. I cleaned the original pump and it is now a beautiful floor lamp in my living room.

[@tutnallman]

I am most envious!

Thanks for watching.

[@John-lq7hs]

Good job! That is so cool, looks really nice now!!

Thanks for watching, I'm glad you like it

[@SylviaPenguin]

What a great looking well! Also build strong and well so that it can last for a longer time! :-)

Thanks for watching. I hope in the future this well is preserved for a long time after I’m gone.

[@unpopuIaropinion]

I want to build a cistern or a tank, to store water. I want to use materials that they used in the past. What materials would you recommend ? Bricks would need some kind of plaster or binder to hold water right? Do you know what they used in the old times?

The ones I've seen appear to be brick with a cement render.

[@unpopuIaropinion]

@ it is not modern cement right ? Any idea of the ingredients? I want to use non toxic ingridients, and modern cement is quite toxic.

@@unpopuIaropinion sorry i dont know what you could use, in the old days it wasn’t really that important to them.

[@philipchurchill6508]

great upload ,no question

[@jackhiggins1808]

Fantastic video. I have a well in my garden that I have began to dig out. I am at about 6ft so I need to rig up a wnch and bucket system and look into air monitoring etc. My well is brick lined, similar to yours. My query is that we live at the top of a hill??!! Out nearest stream is about 500m away all downhill. How deep is my well going to go?

That’s a great project you have there. Sounds like you have similar terrain to me. You’ll be going down to the water table or a vein. In my village the wells are all about 36-40 ft wherever they are. I think that’s about an average depth for a well. Good luck with it.

[@tonycowles4150]

There’s a well where I’ve been working we put air holes round and put a glass top on so you can walk over it trouble is condensation even made the air holes even bigger no different it’s that bad you can’t see through the glass? Any ideas cheers

I’ve heard of this with glass tops. I don’t know how they get round it, perhaps experiment with a small extractor fan to get a bit of air circulation via one of the holes.

[@Theylieohio]

This is a large project to take on . But you are a lot like me , soon as I heard about the well , I would have had my shovel in hand. Great story , hope the water comes out clean and fresh?👍

It was quite an undertaking, I didn't think for one minute we would reach the bottom as it just went on and on, week after week.

[@beersquirrel6149]

Beautiful well!

Thanks for watching

[@djstl100]

I have a well on my farm I bought ..it's rock lined how did you clean out the mud & debris I got 4 ft down but don't trust loose Rock walls

We did about 2ft ech evening, it was only wet mud for the last 9ft. The bricks appeared quite firmly in place, even where some damaged ones had fallen out

[@wiggsan]

Pretty darn cool!

thanks for watching

[@mrfreewayboy]

My house was built in 1885 and I was told there is a well under it, but can't seem to find it.

I hope you manage to find it. Thanks for watching.

[@kenbourt]

How deep is the well,,

It's 36 ft, 11mts to the bottom, thanks for watching.

[@emmanuelgoldstein1089]

That noise at 3:33 repeats through the video. I literally got up (it's the middle of the night) to get a torch to search the room to my left to figure out what the fuck was making that sound. I spent about an hour on my hands and knees convinced we had some creepy crawly in the house. Congratulations. :P

Thanks for watching. I had people here running about looking for leaks when I was editing that one.

[@DE-eVOLVED]

Great video, great job clearing it too..where in the UK roughly was this..?..

Thanks for watching, it’s in Northamptonshire

[@SirD83]

awesome video, are you still at the same house 5 years later?

Still here, thanks for watching.

[@Quercus_Maximus]

How were the bricks laid in Victorian wells like this one?

Basically, just stacking rings of bricks on a desending platform. There's a well sinkers discription here- www.threapwoodhistory.org/Documents/bricklinedwells.pdf

[@Quercus_Maximus]

@ Thanks for the fascinating info, trapped in my Gmail Social for a year.

@@Quercus_Maximus that’s ok, it got there in the end.

[@SAABNerd1]

How did you find It’s exact location?

Basically I spiked the ground where a few old paths met to locate what I was told was a concrete cap. It turned out to be an old cracked sink.

[@wthomas5697]

So did they dig all the way down, bail out the water, set that oak ring and start laying bricks? If so, I wonder how many of those things collapsed on people during the process.

Starting at the top, the shaft of bricks would slowly descend as they undermined the oak ring. It was very dangerous and many people were lost.

[@wthomas5697]

@ Do you mean they would dig down a bit, install an oak ring, then brick the section they'd just dug starting from the ring? Digging the next section would undermine the existing oak ring which they would proceed the same on down? It's hard to visualize how they actually did it. I can imagine it was pretty risky.

@@wthomas5697 The ring would act as a level shelf which would slip down under the weight of bricks. The man at the top would add more courses as the whole thing descended. There are several methods used all over the world which involved digging the hole first then bricking up but I think that tends to be used for shallow wells. There is a lot of sand and gravel in my location, you couldn’t did very deep before it would all collapse in on you.

[@wthomas5697]

@ Oh, so they would undermine the ring gradually thereby letting the bricks sink the ring? So the row of bricks at the bottom of the well, along with the oak ring, started at ground level? Interesting. It seems to me that once the well got deep enough the bricks might start getting hung up on the earth due to friction. I can imagine some issues arising.

@@wthomas5697 yes that’s pretty much how this method was done. I’ve always wondered if the ground got a bit tight but there’s not much info out there to help answer that. I have seen one well that had several rings at different depths so perhaps this happened in this well and they had to start stacking at a lower level.

[@lonefoxbushcraft]

Was there mortar between the bricks going down ?

It’s only applied during the first few feet from the top to stop unfiltered surface water getting in.

[@emmanuelgoldstein1089]

This is amazing! Also isn't Oak just a wonderful timber? :O

It's amazing how wood can be so well preserved when its buried in the right conditions.

[@MrVictorchase]

How did you locate the well?

Besides being told there was one somewhere, I guessed that the communal paths that met might be a clue and the grass above the concrete cap was not so green.

[@teresadriver5354]

We discovered a hole in the garden in Suffolk and it was an old well, I don’t think anyone know it’s there my father in law throw rubbish down there and covered it up with dirt it just looks like the garden, well, well, I know where it is but don’t know if anyone else do?

That would be great if you were able clear it and make it safe in your garden.

[@si4106]

Fair play mate i wouldn't have gone down it.

Thanks for watching.

[@rondelby2482]

It needs rat wire screen. Cats or small animals can still fall in. I would suggest a thick glass top or carbon fiber see through top.

It’s safer than all the garden ponds and waterways around me.

[@carlosayala6754]

Here is my question, how the bricks were installed?

A well sinker would dig a pit to about 4ft and lay a wooden ring on the bottom. Well bricks were then stacked on the ring up to the surface. As the sinker undermined the ring the wall of bricks would slide down into the excavation. New bricks were added to the top and the weight continued to push down the sides as the bottom was excavated. Eventually the well was complete when a satisfactory amount of water seeped in through the brick joints.

[@carlosayala6754]

déjà vu thank you so much.

[@jasonpatterson1403]

Sounds safe! Dig a hole while bricks collapse down around you, haha. I am a current well driller, those guys were crazy back then. Don't forget your parakeet to check for O2.

[@simonjsanderson]

@ Well ('scuse the pun) I never knew that

[@simonjsanderson]

@ But the bottom extra 3ft added must have been done differently otherwise the new bricks would be at the top? So they must have sent some one to do a scary 'undermine the entire well' foundation - or does it have like a shoulder where the 'new' 3ft makes the well narrower (it appears to be)

[@419buckeye7]

This is cool

Thanks for watching

[@IIIBETEPIII]

Wow, great job 👍🏽 Did you call the neighbour? She supposed to be very exited 🤩

Thanks, she had a fear of falling down it so she never came to see it.

[@TheT4kid]

Hopefully when you sell your house they don’t make you seal it again

They are popular features in gardens here, helps to keep the property’s value up.

[@SingerAntonioBlack]

Wow

[@pauldymond4094]

great stuff buddy- fresh chemical free water

Yes, except for the dead snails, insects and decaying ferns!

[@pauldymond4094]

its all good!!!

[@nicholasplesko533]

Little Timmy’s bones.

[@MrCJMacKechnie]

Sir your very detailed. Third video seen. Good show. But, do have the water tested. Better safe than sorry. Wouldn't want you growing a third nose or anything. Kind of difficult finding a job when that happens. (Serious humor).

Thanks for watching John. A friend of mine has run it through a condenser filtration unit. It was the best water he had ever tried.

[@RNCHFND]

Sp00ky

[@emmanuelgoldstein1089]

'Dog bones' ... >_> CHILDREN. D: D: D: D:

[@obinyar68]

do you have a email address I could contact you at?

there is one on the 'about' tab

[@soullessprincess6473]

Would the water be drinkable or would it have to be boiled

It would need to be filtered first as there is quite a lot of life down there now. A friend has run some through a purifier, it tasted pretty good.