Darwin’s Water Management at Down House, England

An article by hydrogeologist Paul Whincup has been published in The Linnean, December 2021 issue, volume 37 (2): 23-30. Paul’s exhaustive research makes this article very enlightening. I remember reading Francis Darwin’s ‘Rustic sounds‘ where he reminisced,

One sound there was peculiar to Down,—I mean the sound of drawing water. In that dry chalky country we depended for drinking-water on a deep well from which it came up cold and pure in buckets. These were raised by a wire rope wound on a spindle turned by a heavy fly-wheel, and it was the monotonous song of the turning wheel that became so familiar to us. The well-house, gloomily placed among laurel bushes, had a sort of terrifying attraction for us, and I remember dropping pebbles and waiting—it seemed ages—for them to fall into the water below. We believed the well to be 365 feet deep, also that this was the height of the dome of St. Paul’s—I have never tested the truth of either statement. The opening was roofed in by a pair of hinged flaps, or doors, and I especially liked the moment when the rising bucket crashed into the doors from below, throwing them open with a brutal and roystering air, which one forgave it as having made a long and dangerous journey [p. 12] up from the distant water. But the best was when the empty bucket went down, and the fly-wheel spun round till its spokes were invisible. Then was the time to remember the death of a dog (called Dick) who was killed by jumping through the flying wheel. I envied my elder brothers who could actually remember Dick: to me he was only a tragic myth. I imagine that in hot dry weather more water was drawn, or else that being more constantly out of doors we heard more of it. It is at least certain that the sound of the well came to be associated with peaceful days and happy weather in that dear garden.

and Gwen Raverat’s ‘Period Piece‘ (1952) where she recalled,

Under the window was the pump, which squeaked in the hot afternoons when they pumped up the drinking water for the house. The well was supposed to be 365 feet deep.

Paul’s article will be online in due time but he has another similar one entitled ‘Darwin’s deep well at Down House, England (UK)‘ which was published in Hydrogeology Journal in July 2021.