Well! Well! Well.

When we moved here, we had to replant the garden from scratch. We put in many new trees, a new vegetable patch, a green house and several flower beds. All the work would have come to nothing, had we not been able to water the vegatables, the saplings and tender plants sufficiently over the summer and until they became established. Our outside tap is a bit of a joke. It takes nearly 4 hours to fill the water butt, so you can imagine it is of no use for watering the garden.
Luckily we have an old brick lined well, with an old hand pump (which looks nice but does not work). Heaven only knows when it was dug, but it is 75 feet deep. When we arrived it had 12 feet of water standing in the bottom.
I purchased a borehole pump and plumbed it and wired it in and "Hey Presto" there was a veritable fountain spraying forth, and at some pressure too. The water butt is now filled in ten minutes (it is an IBC container and holds 1000 litres).
The water level in the well hardly dropped at all the first summer. Nor did it during the winter or spring or the following summer of 2003. But come September 2003, the well was dry. It was not a serious problem for the winter months, other than we could not easily wash the cars. However watering the next summer was murderous. No rain (to speak of) fell that summer or autumn and in fact the well has been dry until about January 2007.
This winter has been wetter than the last few. We live in a chalk valley, but the hills behind us are covered with clay. When there are more than a few millimeters of rain, puddles form and then run off down the valley. When the stream meets the chalk it starts to sink in to it. (It is a nationally important aquifer). When the chalk begins to get saturated, it flows down the valley and eventually it comes down what we have always called "The Gallops" (but what previous inhabitants have called "The Water Meadows").
The water table in the chalk has been rising all winter and in December it reached the base of the well. In the last 2 months has come 10 feet up it. Enough free water for the whole of next summer I hope!