Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 551
Water Wells
Hello Everyone
ln Farmer Jenkins farmyard, is a very old and very deep water well. lt was dug many years ago to provide water for anyone living in the farmhouse.
Nowadays, of course, Farmer Jenkins and his family use taps and indoor plumbing to fill kettles, basins and baths. But many years ago, if you wanted water to use for drinking and cooking and maybe washing some things like pots and pans you had to fetch it from a well – and carrying water in a large bucket is heavy work.
Some people actually have wells under their houses. lt must have been more convenient to collect water from an inside well than an outside one. You did not have to go out in the wet and cold to collect water and you did not have to carry it far after you pulled it up out of the well.
ln modern times, people put a board over the top of the well – or they could cap it with a thick glass sheet that is safe to walk on so that they can stand over the well and look down into it – creepy!
Wells had to be dug by hand when there was no heavy machinery to help out.
There are stories of prisoners of war being made to dig deep wells as a kind of punishment and they would take many years to get down to a water source deep underground.
This water source is called a water table or an aquifer. This is a pocket of water trapped between layers of rock.
Well water is supposed to be very sweet, but you should never drink from a well unless the water has been tested and found to be safe. lt could actually be quite toxic, and even prove deadly.
ln the town of Howarth, Yorkshire in the north of England, disease was caused when water drained through the graveyard and into the drinking water supply at the bottom of the slope. Yuk!
Do you ever go into a shopping mall and see a lot of coins in the fountains or water ponds there and wonder why people have thrown them in there?
Sometimes you might see an old water well outside a picturesque pub or on a village green. There is very often a grill across the top to stop people and animals from falling into them.
ln ancient pagan traditions water wells were seen as sacred places. They brought life-giving water up a channel from Mother Earth. People would throw coins into them in the hope that it would bring them a wealth of good luck.
So this is a very old practice that people continue today.
Some wells became famous when people decided they brought healing waters to the surface and went to bathe in them in order to try and cure their ills. This happened in places like Bath and Royal Tunbridge Wells.
Water wells have been around for about 10 thousand years. They were dug in many parts of the world.
People knew that the water from them could be cleaner than the water taken from a river.
Holes for wells can be dug out or drilled with a machine and the water drawn up by a pump or in a bucket. ln Europe, machinery was first used to dig wells in the early 1800s.
The first wells were lined with wood or stone. Later in history, bricks could be used. The walls had to be strong so that the sides did not cave in.
The water was used for people and domestic animals to drink, and also to irrigate the land. There could be large wells in the streets of towns for a whole neighbourhood to use. Eventually the wells became large pumps.
ln developing countries, wells are still an important source of clean drinking water and in some places animals are tethered to a wheel that draws water up mechanically so there is plenty for watering crops.
The deepest hand-dug well in the world is the Woodingdean Well in Brighton on the south coast of England. lt is 392m/1,285 feet deep. lt was started in 1858 and took four years of working around the clock to dig before the workmen hit water. lt quickly flooded the shaft which was only 4 feet wide.
You can visit this well. lt is outside Nuffield Hospital.
Another well constructed in 1887 in Kansas, USA was 33 feet in diameter. That one was dug to a depth of 33m/109 feet.
A famous one in ltaly was built in 1527 to a width of 13m/43 feet depth of 53m/175 feet. lt has 248 steps and 70 windows.
That well is quite old, but water wells are still being dug today. They are useful to people who have houses in rural areas or standing way out in the wilds.
So how did people know where to dig a well?
Well, often they used water divining; and this is still used today – and it still works. Someone walks along with two divining rods in their hands and where the sticks cross is where water flows beneath the person’s feet.
You can see how it is done in the Picture Gallery.
Bye bye everyone – don’t forget to subscribe to my blog!
Love and kisses
Salty Sam
www.christina-sinclair.com
Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week
Bill: Why did the turtle get sent to prison?
Bob: l don’t know. Why did the turtle get sent to prison??
Bill: Because he was known as a hard case!
Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.
Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com
Picture Gallery
Water springs in Bath
Howarth Graveyard
Water drawn with use of a wheel
Water pump
Village water well
Woodingdean well
The Big Well Kansas
Orvieto Well Italy
Vlad the Impaler’s Castle, Transylvania
Just one place where prisoners were forced to dig
Divining rods
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
My Auntie Alice has had another bumper harvest of honey this year.
She keeps an eye on her bees to make sure they are healthy, and that their hives are in good condition too. They repay her with lots of goodies that they make.
There is always clean water for them to drink because they need water as much as the birds and hedgehogs in her garden do.
As well as honey, her bees produce beeswax and this can be made into items such as candles and soap.
When the wax is made into soap it is mixed with lots of other ingredients.
Making soap the way she does requires using dangerous chemicals so the children are not allowed to help, and Auntie Alice’s pets are kept well out of the way too.
She has to work in a well-ventilated room and handle some of the ingredients she uses with great care.
The children always complain that they can’t join in, but recently Auntie Alice found some recipes for soap that were made with goat milk soap base.
They seemed suitable for children to make.
So one afternoon this week, they tried some of them out.
The soap did not take long to set either, which was a good thing for impatient children!
They needed different oils, dried flower head, oats and honey as well.
Auntie Alice already had the equipment they needed and because the soap set so quickly the moulds weren’t in use for long.
All the soaps turned out really well.
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Quick Quiz
On which continents would you find these deserts?
- Sahara
- Gobi
- Namib
- Arabian
- Kalahari
- Patagonian
- Great Basin
- Great Victoria
- Atacama
- Columbia Basin
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE A SNUGGLY WlNTER HAT AND SCARF
You will really need to be a good knitter by now to make this set.
You need to be the kind of knitter that can pick up any stitches you might drop without difficulty, and be able to keep a good rhythm when you are changing between plain and purl stitches.
To help you keep your place in the pattern you could use a row marker – a paper clip would work – to mark the right side of your knitting to instantly see if you are working on a first or second row of the two row pattern.
If this pattern is too difficult for you, then just use garter stitch for the whole item. Check size before you cut off yarn whichever stitches you use.
You will need three whole 100g balls for the scarf and then another 100g ball for the hat.
This scarf is big and there is plenty of knitting to wrap around your neck.
If you are knitting a hat and scarf set for a child, you could buy just three 100g balls, knit the hat first and use the rest of the yarn up on the scarf.
This set will take a long time to make so you had better get started now if you want it by the time the cold winter weather comes!
WOMAN’S SCARF (KNIT ONE)
Using 4mm knitting needles and dk yarn cast on 62 stitches
The pattern has 4 rows repeated for the entire length of the scarf
Just keep knitting until you have used up the three balls of yarn.
Cast off
4 ROW PATTERN
Slip 1 (knit 2, purl 2) repeat the last 4 stitches to last 5 stitches, knit 2, purl 3
Repeat last row once
Slip 1 (purl 2, knit 2) repeat the last 4 stitches to last 5 stitches, purl 2, knit 3
Repeat last row once
WOMAN’S HAT (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and dk yarn cast on 58 stitches
Slip 1, knit 2, purl 2 (knit 2, purl 2) repeat last 4 stitches 11 times, knit 2, purl 3
Repeat last row 9 times (10 rows of 2×2 rib)
Knit 4 rows of stocking stitch
Slip 1, knit 2 (purl 2, knit 2) repeat last 4 stitches 12 times, purl 3
Repeat this row once
Slip 1, purl 2 (knit 2, purl 2) repeat last 4 stitches 12 times, knit 3
Repeat this row once
Continue knitting this repeated pattern for 70 rows
Cut off yarn with 30cm/12 inches to spare and thread your stitches onto this end
TO MAKE UP
Pull the top of the hat up tight
With wrong sides together over-sew along the sides of the ribbing
Turn the hat wrong side out
With right sides together over-sew along the main body of the hat
CHILD’S SCARF (KNIT ONE)
Using 4mm knitting needles and dk yarn cast on 50 stitches
The pattern has 4 rows repeated for the entire length of the scarf
Just keep knitting until you have the scarf as long as you would like it to be
Cast off
4 ROW PATTERN
Slip 1 (knit 2, purl 2) repeat the last 4 stitches to last 5 stitches, knit 2, purl 3
Repeat last row once
Slip 1 (purl 2, knit 2) repeat the last 4 stitches to last 5 stitches, purl 2, knit 3
Repeat last row once
CHILD’S HAT (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and dk yarn cast on 46 stitches
Slip 1, knit 2, purl 2 (knit 2, purl 2) repeat last 4 stitches 8 times, knit 2, purl 3
Repeat last row 7 times (8 rows of 2×2 rib)
Knit 4 rows of stocking stitch
Slip 1, knit 2 (purl 2, knit 2) repeat last 4 stitches 9 times, purl 3
Repeat this row once
Slip 1, purl 2 (knit 2, purl 2) repeat last 4 stitches 9 times, knit 3
Repeat this row once
Continue knitting this repeated pattern for 54 rows
Cut off yarn with 30cm/12 inches to spare and thread your stitches onto this end
TO MAKE UP
Pull the top of the hat up tight
With wrong sides together over-sew along the sides of the ribbing
Turn the hat wrong side out
With right sides together over-sew along the main body of the hat
Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use and for use in classrooms only.
It is a copyright infringement and, therefore, illegal under international law to sell items made with these patterns.
Use of the toys and projects is at your own risk.
©Christina Sinclair Designs 2015
Quick Quiz Answers
- Sahara – Africa
- Gobi – Eastern Asia
- Namib – Africa
- Arabian – Western Asia
- Kalahari – Africa
- Patagonian – South America
- Great Basin – North America
- Great Victoria – Australia
- Atacama – South America
- Columbia Basin – North America
