House with a Well, East Ilsley

Image: © Des Blenkinsopp Taken: 2 Aug 2011

The thing in front of the house just by the drain pipe is a well windlass. Many houses in East Ilsley had their own wells. A lot have been filled in, but there are a fair number still surviving. The number of wells in these downland villages is, unsurprisingly, linked to their height above the water table. Villages on high ground tend to have just one deep communal village well. Here in the bottom of a valley the water table is relatively near the surface. Indeed, in very wet years groundwater levels here get so high that wells overflow and water runs through streets and gardens and occasionally houses as East Ilsley becomes the temporary source of the River Pang.

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