Have you ever heard of a well sweep? I've been in the water business for a long time and I'd never heard of such a thing until I picked up the June 2018 issue of Early American Life magazine. In it was an article entitled "Well Sweeps." The article indicated that long before there were such things as hand or electric pumps, well sweeps were a way of removing water from a well. I was fascinated and decided I needed to find out more about these devices.

So what is a well sweep? It's an object made of two or three poles located near a well, but not just any well. Rather it is a well that is three, four or more feet in diameter that was dug to a source of groundwater not too far below the land surface. Most likely the well was lined with bricks and the bricks were extended to a few feet above land surface. But instead of having a frame and windlass above the well to allow a bucket to be cranked down to the water and when filled cranked up, there was this strange looking apparatus, the well-sweep, made of two or three poles that if you use your imagination, looks a bit like a skinny wingless bird dipping its beak into the well.

The well sweep is constructed of a pole that is forked on the top and that is buried in the ground several feet from the well. A second pole pivots on the fork of the first pole with one end lined up directly over the well. A third pole, a rope, or a chain is attached to the end of the pole over the well so that when the opposite end of the second pole is raised, a bucket on the end of the third pole, rope or chain can be lowered into the well deep enough that the bucket can be filled with water. Then when the far end of the second pole is lowered, the bucket is raised from the well and the water can be collected.

It sounds simple and it is. This primitive device is just a large lever. However, operating the sweep doesn't seem to me to be simple. I believe it must have been a two-person job, one to raise and lower the far end of the second pole and the other to collect the water from the bucket. The far end of the sweep might be attached to a counterweight to make lifting the filled bucket easier.

It's been determined that sweeps were first invented and used in the Middle East dating to 2200 B. C. E. Those sweeps were known by the Egyptian word, shadoof. They were widely used in Europe during the middle ages and were first used in America by early settlers. There are only a few remaining in America and they essentially are museum pieces. However, there are significant numbers still in use in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. The photo is of a less primitive well sweep from Denmark.

It never occurred to me that such devices existed. I guess that even a hydrologist with 50 years of experience can still learn something about extracting water!