Thanks to National Lottery funding, AGES AHA launched its latest project in March 2021. Titled “All’s Well That Ends Well”, it involves a year long investigation into historic water sources in and around Hadleigh and Thundersley and, in this time of global warming and potential water scarcity, hopes to celebrate the value of local water sources with a Well Dressing in October.

Not all the old well sites in the area are on the late Victorian map, the only one which shows them at all, so the club are trying to locate others and add them to the map so that we can show how dependent we all were on wells before piped water came along during the early 1900s.

If you have a current or filled in well in your Hadleigh or Thundersley garden, we’d love to hear from you. If you don’t know exactly where it was, we may be able to find the site of it again for you by dowsing, ground probing or by using our geophysics equipment.

While being mindful of the safety risks of wells, where the water table is near the ground level, we would also be quite happy to assist you if you were thinking of digging out the top 1m of any old filled in well to see if you could reuse it as a source of water for your garden.

If you want to become involved in the ongoing historical research or learn more about the detail of what we are finding out via our club meetings (on Zoom while the pandemic is with us), please join our club via the appropriate page on this website.

Once a member, you will also be able to access the Member’s Area of this website where you will be be able to read reports on what we have found so far.

If you would like to offer up your garden for a survey, just contact us via the email address on the front page of the website. We’d love to get you on board and find out a little more for you about the history of your house.