from Hacker News

Deepest hand dug well in the world (2006)

by nateguchi on 11/11/17, 5:59 PM with 16 comments

  • by ChuckMcM on 11/12/17, 6:43 AM

    An amazing bit of industry. There was a home owner in Sunnyvale that hand dug a fairly large basement under his house over the years. When he passed and his heirs went to sell it they discovered it. It clearly wasn't up to code and the city had them seal it up in some way and add it to the disclosures when they sold the house. Apparently it started as a 'root cellar' to keep his vegetables cool during the summer.

  • by Jedd on 11/11/17, 10:56 PM

    Can we please add a [2005] to the title?

    Though they themselves are confused about the history of the actual article:

    > Added to the site on 16-11-04

    > This page was added on 22/03/2006.

    I lived in England for a few years. Coming from Australia, where we have precious little surviving historical structures, either pre or post white settlement, there's a weird combination of envy, surprise, and shock at the Brit's track record.

    The 'Lost gardens of Heligan'[1] are a good example, with a happy ending. Nearby, at Lyme Regis, a watermill[2] dating from the 1300's (perhaps a couple of centuries earlier) had, as recently as 1991, been been at risk from the local council of being pulled down and replaced with townhouses and retail outlets.

    Hearing that, while standing in a beautiful/historic/functional building that's 3-5x older than anything we had back home, was surreal.

    I appreciate the line needs to be drawn somewhere. There's an abundance of structures that I see around me each day that I'd be happy to see gone, and even if - perhaps especially if - they were still standing in a millennia, I'd encourage the demolition of.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Gardens_of_Heligan

    [2] http://www.townmill.org.uk/

  • by emmelaich on 11/11/17, 11:33 PM

  • by uiri on 11/12/17, 7:32 AM

    This reminds me of the deep well at Nuremberg Castle which is a measly 50 m (164 feet) deep. That on its own is deep enough that things take a noticeable amount of time to reach the water's surface. I imagine that it would take 5-10 minutes before you'd hear some water that was dropped down this one hit the surface.

  • by emmelaich on 11/11/17, 11:28 PM

    I love reading through the comments on these articles.

    A "Jonathan Brown" wrote a play about it: http://www.somethingunderground.co.uk/the-well/

  • by 13of40 on 11/12/17, 6:24 AM

    I think it would be interesting to send someone down there with a camera to see what's accumulated in the last hundred and fifty years. Based on the comments there's at least one piece of wood and possibly a dead nun...

  • by jstanier on 11/11/17, 10:50 PM

    Nice to see my hometown on the front page.

    Saw the cover of this structure outside the Nuffield Health hospital a while ago and had no idea what it was.

    Well I'll be damned!

  • by Boothroid on 11/12/17, 3:08 PM

    I live nearby and recently discovered this piece of local history. I wish there were a way to open it to the public!

    For some reason I'm fascinated by anything subterranean. The Great County Adit is quite an incredible feat, the world's largest drainage adit, started in the 1700s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_County_Adit

    Crazily enough people are still interested in exploring these places: https://www.aditnow.co.uk/community/viewtopic.aspx?t=8031