An extract from copious notes provided by local historian, David Bottomley.
| An elderly gentleman,
born in 1925, had reminisced: "Although there were many water pumps in the
village, people would walk quite a distance with their buckets and metal jugs
for this delectable water from the Fountain. Doctors, including our last
resident doctor, Dr. E. Waud, used the water extensively for making up
medicine. In our home it was customary to fetch a bucket morning and night for
cooking, tea making, and home made lemonade in the summer. It had its drawbacks
- you would leave the pump with a full bucket and arrive home with three parts
of a bucket, plus wet shoes and stockings. It was very soft water and very much
in demand on wash days. Water for the side boilers in the kitchen fireplace was
from the outside rain tubs. Piped water was introduced into the village in the
mid-1930s. The fountain was erected at a cost of £400". David Bottomley has subsequently carried out some further research and confirms that it was indeed a pump, and that the handle was removed, given to a villager, but has now been lost. |