We’ve been thinking about a pond. I really liked the pond at Great Elm and would have liked a pond in Villagarcia, but it would have been impractical.
So we’ve been talking about putting a pond in somewhere – but where! I was just musing this through and was thinking about the water supply for the pond and wondering if water came in somewhere to the back of the house which is where the original kitchen was and I realized – we don’t have a well! And then I thought more and I don’t think any of the houses do. However in this little hamlet most if not all would predate piped water. What a mystery!
There is a pilar which I guess is about 100 meters up the hill (which is circled in pink). Pilars are communal water sources which are used instead of wells for water collection and some also for washing clothes. However, while I can imagine that although impractical, people could walk up to get water, this house and many others had livestock so surely they didn’t take the cows up the hill for water? The shepherd in Villagarcia used to take his sheep to the pilar, but that was a lot flatter – and they were sheep not cows.
We do have spring water piped into the house so obviously there is a source somewhere. And the pilar has an overflow from which water flows somewhere. And the river isn’t ‘too’ far away, but certainly not super-convenient for collecting water.
So my question was why build houses where there’s no obvious water source OR why build the pilar up the hill from the houses. Particularly houses with livestock which would need a lot of water.
Then I thought more and there’s a channel which runs along the side of the road. It’s a very definite channel but doesn’t have running water. I had just thought it was a drainage channel, but thinking about it, the water runs down the hill, so it doesn’t really need a drainage channel – I can’t see how it would work.
Therefore I am wondering if that channel was some form of viaduct with running water in the past from either the overflow from the pilar and/or the spring where we get the piped spring water currently and the houses took water from this channel. That would sort of make sense as the channel appears to go into the center of this little hamlet.
As far as I can see there’s no old water storage containers so I assume the water flowed all year round (it doesn’t currently, the spring water dries up during the summer).
I suppose there could be an old well somewhere, there was more land attached to the house than there is now, but it’s not obvious – but it remains a bit of a mystery!!
The next step is to have a look at the pilar and see if I can see where the water overflow from the pilar goes. I had thought it was to the river, but if it goes somewhere towards the channel at the side of the road things might be clearer 🙂