No 104. Water No 104. Water. A simple enough thing now to get water, turn on the tap and there it is. But to my first memory it was not so. At Wh

No 104. Water in the Well.

A simple enough thing now to get water, turn on the tap and there it is. But to my first memory it was not so.
At Whitehall we were privileged in the Big Hoos and had at least water in the Farmhouse pumped up from the Reservoir which served the Village. We had a bathroom with hot and cold taps, a back boiler in the kitchen stove which worked intermittently.
We also had an outdoor water tank filled with rain water from the roof gutters, softer water and better for the Washhouse. There was a largeish stone walled water tank I remember our father building at the steading, again filled with roof water. At Airy he built a similar but much larger watertank with quarried stone from the Hundy Quarry, rendered inside with layers of cement until water proof. That was built around 1939 I think. He sold Airy to the Spences of Millfield in May 1943. Sharon and I were back in Stronsay in July 2009 and the big stone tank is still there, still holding roof water for the steading after 70 years.
The men and their wives in the cottages at Whitehall had no tap water, a well just up the road at the back of the stackyard had to do them for buckets of drinking water. They all had water barrels at the corners of their house, again filled from the roofs. Clean enough for washing clothes but it was not used for drinking water. Too many sea gulls perched on the roofs!!
The byres had no water bowls or taps and all the cattle had buckets of water carried to their heads in the stalls. The feeders byre cattle were let off their asks - neck chains - and went to the horse pond for a drink, then back to the byre and up each into their own stall. There were feeding cattle that only got a big basket of turnips twice a day and no water, but there was enough water in the turnips. And as has been said many a time, “Gey good water!”
Hen houses often had a water barrel and a gutter to collect the roof water when it rained. If not, and with dry weather, it had to be labouriously carried in buckets, sometimes quite a distance.

Much more pressing was water for the cattle when out in the fields in summer. The horse drawn water-cart was much used to carry water to a field trough, again hard repetitive work for two men filling it with buckets from the water tank at the steading.




One of the fields with no water, Blackha, suggested a well might find some. Our father decided to dig at the bottom of the field near the shore. Jamie Moad from Airy, a master hand of almost everything, came over to supervise the task. They dug down into the rock with simple hand tools, sledge hammer, pick, pinchbar, heavy punch crowbar drill. It was all hard work which went on as other farm work allowed in summer. Eventually the well was deep enough to find water seeping in from the surrounding rock.
Then they build a stone wall around it, covered it with large flagstones and mounted a pump at the top of a long iron pipe which went down to the bottom of the well. It had a long curved iron handle, a piston with a thick rubber washer to fit the pipe. Operating it was a simple up and down pumping movement but a bucket or two of water had to be first poured into the pipe to prime it and create suction. Got the priming water out of the well with a pail on a rope, though dropping it face down just so in order to fill it was an art to be learned.
A water trough was also built beside the well cast in concrete and the pump emptied into it. Pumping water was a daily task in summer when cattle were in the field and we kept hen houses near that well for the water supply which saved a lot of carrying of pails.
The well is now disused as time has moved on and water is piped by our successors from a County Water Supply to all the fields and all the houses.

Digging wells was a constant task in Stronsay in William Tait’s Diary at Rousam with our grandfather on 27th June 1899 he writes “ Master and Peter Stevenson digging a well in Doonatoon.” On 28th July 1899 they quarried & carted 11 loads of stones for the well at Doonatoon.
On 22nd June 1900 he refers to digging a well in the field called Geogar. So digging wells was a steady job when time allowed from other farm work.
Wells were everywhere, some near a house, others quite a bit to go. Carrying buckets of water with two buckets and a square wooden frame to keep the pails off your legs was a constant task for the women of the house. I do not remember ever seeing a man carrying water.!!!.