Last week’s item on smokehouses has generated some interest about other ancillary farm structures, specifically wellhouses and outhouses, also known as privies. The wellhouse dates from the earliest colonial times, serving to safeguard the availability of ground water, especially in rural areas. The outhouse, also sometimes called “the necessary,” defines itself in that word.
In the Northern Neck, until the coming of the artesian well, wells were dug by hand to the level needed to reach a plentiful supply of potable ground water, sometimes at a depth of 40 to 50 feet. Once dug to the requisite level of getting a steady flow into the hole, a circular brick wall would be built to keep the well from collapsing and to retard soil from sifting into the chasm.
The bricks were not cemented together, instead being laid one upon the other up to the surface. As technology developed, windmills could be erected at the well site to provide for getting the water without having to lower a bucket and hoist it up to take the water into the house or to the barnyard to water animals. Fortunately, in this area the soil allowed for digging down to the water level.
In the western part of the Commonwealth frequently such was not the case. Many years ago, I visited a farm in Page County with a large Victorian house built at the end of the 19th century. The property was on a mountainside, and had no access to ground water as the base below the topsoil was shear rock.
To compensate, the house had a tin metal roof with an elaborate system of gutters, troughs and pipes to catch rainfall and channel it to large storage tanks adjacent to the house, thereby giving new meaning to the word “primitive.”
On our farm we have two dug brick-lined wells, each about 30 feet deep. We use their water for gardening purposes, as it does not contain the high level of salt that is found in the artesian well. The brick cylinder is laid artistically, despite not being seen by anyone except for a plumber having to go down into the well to clean it.
Usually, a wellhouse would be built to keep the water supply free of pollutants that might otherwise fall into the water and safe from the fear of someone falling into the well. Most wellhouses were built of wood, but at major estates, they were brick, with some being laid in Flemish bond to match the walls of the house. Many were positioned opposite the smokehouse to form a quadrant to the rear of the manor house.
As I noted above, the outhouse was a necessary fact of life in early America. Again, affluent owners had ones made of brick, but most were frame, made of pine and usually with one seat. On Route 360 at Horsehead in Northumberland County, a three-seater is visible from the road. It is a later version, probably from the early 20th century, the siding being made of sheet metal, now rusty due to the passage of time.
At Stratford Hall, in the restorations of the 1930s a large formal garden was laid out on the north side of the mansion. In recent years the garden was removed, researchers having concluded that it would not have been in that position in colonial times as it was in front of the necessary, likely an accurate assessment.
As with the smokehouse and the wellhouse, the outhouse is disappearing from our midst. Obviously no longer needed for practical purposes, these structures are falling into disrepair and being removed from the landscape, a sad fate as they represent a significant part of our early history.
