Welcome to a new series by Bob Randall featuring old photographs of our villages. We start at Helpston in 1896 during the boring of an artesian well for a new village water supply.
Helpston, junction of Woodgate & Broad Wheel Road, August 1896
The drilling has just finished and spectators have gathered around to watch the water gushing from the new borehole beneath the rig. In the photograph on the right, we see the finished well - this view must have been captured before 1909 since, due to fall in water pressure, a hand pump had replaced the original well. In the late 1930’s mains water was piped to the village and the pump eventually fell into disrepair and was removed in 1954.
The boring of this well may have been prompted by a report, in the Peterborough Standard in 1895, of the discovery of a new water supply at the Paper Mill in Helpston. According to the report a considerable quantity of water at great force was discovered, with the aid of a divining rod, at depth of 80 feet below the surface.
We now know that below our villages lies a prolific aquifer in a layer of Lincolnshire Limestone at a depth of 15m to 40m below the surface. Following the discovery at Helpston, artesian wells were bored in Glinton and Peakirk and a new supply for Peterborough was established at the Etton Waterworks. Today, Anglian Water still takes a large part of itssupply from the same aquifer, up to 40 million litres of water per day are taken from local boreholes.
The same location today
The Ingram’s family of Helpston kindly supplied these photographs - if you have any old photographs of the villages you would like to see featured in the Tribune, then please contact us.
The finished well - photographed before 1909
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