A discovery

I think I'm stuck in last weeks assignment. I haven't actually ventured outside the garden for 2 days, in fact I've only even stepped out of the house a couple of times. However, the good news is I have made a big hole in my workload, still loads to do before Friday but I'm getting there.

Once again blip comes to the rescue and moves me away from my desk and gets those creaky joints moving. (Think of that bit in the Wizard of Oz where the Tinman has a brief encounter with some WD40 and you'll be about there.) I wandered around the garden pointing my camera at 'Non essential' stuff. Problem is all of our stuff is non essential, but it will come in handy one day.

I ended up at our well. Which although no longer essential, must have been at one point. Our little island didn't actually get mains water until 1967. Which is hard to imagine. It's one of those things you take for granted (until you are reminded!).

The well was covered over at some point in the last 40 years. We discovered it by accident last year when our neighbour came along in his JCB to dig through the layer of hardcore so that we could put in our raised veg beds. The first couple of holes were no problem but at this spot huge slabs of stone started to appear.

Steven spent a very happy weekend up to his ears in glaur removing the stone and rubble until he reached a 'hole'. Now in other parts of the world you might not worry too much when you remove layers of worked stone to find a dark void where you can't see the bottom. But in Orkney the bones of history don't lie too far below the surface. A friend who knows about such things, said it looked fairly recent which around here means in the past 2,000 years.

However after consulting a few archeaological type folk and finding several maps of the farm going back to mid 19th century with a big word WELL over the spot so everyone was happy that we carry on clearing it. With the instruction of "If you find bone or pottery, STOP". We had no such luck, then again maybe we were very lucky we didn't find anything.

Steven then spent an even happier weekend covered in even more glaur. This time with the addition of a long pointy stick which he kept poking down into the depths to see how far it would go. A friend of ours was very dissapointed that it wasn't a cute litle round well with a wee red roof, a bucket and a gnome. But around here they tended to be rectangular as there is an ample supply of large flat stone. Someone else who remembers their well, said that his Dad used to keep a couple of peedie fish in it. If the water became poisoned the fish died. I suppose it's a bit like miners carrying canaries.

Once it was cleared we could see it was over 1m deep, neatly constructed and if we looked closely where the fresh water runs into it. Over the summer it has become filled with algae (and frogs) and the area around it has become overgrown. One day we'll clear it all and turn it into an Italian sunken garden (aye, right). But until that day it's handy to know it's there just in case the water gets cut off.