Oakridge's Water Supply

1. Oakridge - (W)ells, Springs and (P)umps shown on 25" 1902 OS Map
2. Bournes Green - (W)ells, Springs and (P)umps shown on 25" 1902 OS Map
3. Far Oakridge - (W)ells, Springs and (P)umps shown on 25" 1902 OS Map
4. Tunley - (W)ells, Springs and (P)umps shown on 25" 1902 OS Map
5. Waterlane - (W)ells, Springs and (P)umps shown on 25" 1902 OS Map
6. Water Carriers, Bisley 1900
7. 2014 Survey of Wells, Pumps and Springs in Oakridge Lynch
8. The Butcher's Arms at last gets mains water, 1963

Reminiscences regarding local water supply

Tony Partridge remembered his family firm putting in concrete liners to form wells in 1930s. They would have been commissioned when new house built or for animals.

People got water diviners to locate position of a fresh well. Lots of people could do this.

The well at what is now Partridge House/Keenelip was filled in.

Tony remembers a farmer sinking seven holes to put up a big barn and on the eighth it proved to be an old well and he had to move all the previous seven.

There is a limit to the height which you can pump up water of 32 feet.

Tunley got its water from Kings Farm which had a pump taking water from the spring.

Alison Gardiner remembers when playing in Church Fields during school lunch break hearing the clunk, clunk, clunk of the hydraulic ram at the bottom of the field. Water from here was pumped up to a tank on the site of The Crescent and from here to the school and to the memorial trough.

She recalls a story often told about a small boy falling down the well at Nelson Inn and being saved from death by his petticoats getting caught on a stone ledge part way down. Thinks it was a child of the Crew family.

Both Alison and Tony recall drawing water being women's work.

Sally remembers growing up in Sweet Briar Cottage. They didn't have any water to the house, so had to go down the road with our buckets and baths to the trough where we could get fresh water. “We had to go down quite a few times when it was bath days and on Mondays which were always washing day. When my sister and two brothers had our baths it was in the coal house in a tin bath.”

D J Barker recalls in “A Cotswold Childhood”

“In 1940 my father died and my mother and I went to live with Uncle Willie in Oakridge......There was no electricity or mains water supply in the village, and such chores as emptying the earth closet, cleaning and filling the paraffin lamps and trimming their wicks, drawing water from the well and washing everything by hand were accepted as essential parts of living, like breathing. At least the well water never froze, which is more than could be asid later for the piped variety!

Our house, Well Close, was unusual in having the well in an outhouse adjoining the kitchen; most other people had a well in the garden or drew water from the nearest spring. Our well house was also very handy for storing paraffin, lamps, coal and kindling wood, but my mother once left the parraffin running from a 10 gallon drum into the jug from which we used to fill the lamps and stoves, so it finished up with most of it down the well, and it took weeks for the taste to clear from our water. Many well buckets were larger than the common 2-gallon size and from time to time somebody suffered the damage to pride and person that resulted from a runaway well handle. In retrospect I wonder why none of the wells had a pawl on the windlass, but they certainly didn't.

Later, in the war, German and Italian POWs were employed in digging the trenches to carry the main water pipes across the fields to Frampton Mansell on the opposite side of the valley, and we could always tell when the Germans were at work because the trench moved much faster. We all thought them much finer fellows for it, and it was only in the more distant future that it occurred to use that perhaps the Italians were the smarter!”

Extract from Stroud News and Journal, 21 March 1947

Expenditure of £50,000 approved by Stroud Water Board for water supplies to Chalford, Sisley and Eastcombe and for Randwick and Whiteshill.

Mr Peters (engineer) reported that contractor expected to have the schemes completed in 6 months.

Engineer also reported that since previous meeting some 250 - 300 services had been broken. The worst at Eastcombe and Painswick. [Apparently bursts from bad winter weather]

Extract from Stroud News and Journal, 18 April 1947

Work on bisley - Chalford water supply. Some work by German POWs on scheme as shortage of British labour. With better weather, good progress being made.

Extract from Stroud News and Journal, 11 July 1947

Mr Peters said mains laid to Eastcombe and Brownshill and was at present going through France Lynch towards Bournes Green.

Extract from Stroud News and Journal, 17 October 1947

Though applications for connection to mains water have been invited and recorded, Water Board explains that they do not expect to make connections to the mains water supply till new year for Chalford, France Lynch and district. It does not expect to get to Bisley before March of next year.