The Early History of Water-Supply

Abstract

IT is clear that human settlements normally began on sites where a supply of water for drinking and other necessary purposes was available at once from streams or springs. But in the first place settlements once founded tend to grow and may, after the passage of long or short periods, outgrow the original supply or so contaminate it by their very existence that a new source must be found. In the second place factors other than the simple geographical, such as the necessity for defence against enemies or the presence of such desirable commodities as mineral ores, may lead to the foundation of settle? ments at sites where no supply of water is naturally available. This may happen even in England to-day, when war necessitates the placing of camps and aerodromes in open country?open, in many cases, just because no water-supply is readily available. The methods adopted by man to overcome these difficulties fall into two main groups: and aqueducts. Wherever a spring was used it must have occurred to man at a very early stage in history to dig a hole in order to increase or make more readily available the water issuing from it. Such enclosed springs have frequently been called wells; for instance, most of the holy wells of Britain are of this nature. The folklore attached to these is interesting but is not part of the history of water-supply. The word well is here used for a means of obtaining water from the earth vertically beneath the spot at which it is required where it is not obviously present at the surface. For springs enclosed by masonry or by other means made available for filling buckets a good old English word is in use in the Cotswolds, though stated in the Dialect Dictionary to be obsolete. The inhabitants of Hook Norton to-day fetch their domestic water-supplies from the Town Tite, the Down End Tite, etc.