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St. Keverne Village Wells
Memories of Billy Moyle
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Billie Moyle, now aged 94, has
lived in St Keverne all his life and remembers
the days long before mains water was available to
village residents. In the early days it was the
responsibility of the parish council to maintain
the public wells and pumps and to deal with any
grievances arising.
In his youth and up to the late 1950s there were
several sources of water at various locations
within St Keverne. Up until about 1920 there were
houses and workshops in the middle of the Square
(where the War Memorial stands today) and these
premises obtained water from a well in the centre
of Willie Hodge's shoemakers shop. Miss
Lizzie Tripp lived in one of these houses.
There was also a well in Doctors Hill at the top
end of William John Tripcony's carpenters
shop and house (today the premises of Retallack
the butchers). The door to the well is still
there.
For residents living in the Commercial Road area
water was obtained from the well and pump
situated in Well Lane on the right hand side of
the lane just below the Parish Hall. Sadly, the
old iron pump has long gone.
The main source of water for the village was the
Reservoir which was located on the site of the
present day bus shelter. This was a large storage
tank capable of holding thousands of gallons of
water and was fed by the same source as the well
in Doctors Hill. The Reservoir was surrounded by
high iron railings and the tank was covered by a
zinc metal roof. Only on a very few occasions did
the water level drop following a dry spell. The
local fire-brigade used this water regularly when
attending fires in the area of the Square. I can
remember when the cottage on the corner of Trelyn
Lane caught fire and was destroyed - water was
carried in buckets from the Reservoir in the
attempt to put out the flames. A stand - pipe
supplied water to the stone trough on the Square
side of the Reservoir- from this the villagers
filled their pails while cattle could drink from
the granite trough. It was always a bit messy
around the Reservoir after the cattle had been
there and there were many complaints to the
parish council. The Reservoir was used up until
about 1958.
Several houses had their own well in the garden.
In the house where I was born in 1910 and where I
still live, there is a well in the garden. This
is always full to the brim, even in times of
"drought", and on those occasions
people from the village come to my house with
buckets to collect water for their gardens. Up
until the arrival of mains water, my family used
this water for drinking, washing and cooking by
using the hand pump outside my back door.
There were also dowsers in the village who had
the knack of finding water. One of them, William
Rogers (known as Lawyer Bill), was my next door
neighbour - he probably discovered the well in my
back garden. This water eventually finds its way
down under the Parish Room and through the field
until it reaches the stream and millpool at
Tregoning. In my days this field belonged to John
Rogers and later Henry Rogers and their cows
drank from the stone trough at the bottom of the
field where an overflow pipe from the ground fed
the trough.
All these wells in St Keverne are connected. One
source is an underground stream running down
Trelyn Lane towards the Reservoir which is also
fed by a stream coming down Doctors Hill. This
eventually finds its way down past the White Hart
and down Well Lane before emptying into the river
that reaches the sea at Porthoustock. Another
probably comes down Back Lane and goes under
Commercial Road before reaching the river at
Tregoning.
August 2005 |
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