Schoolmaster’s cistern
There is a sinking circular depression in the grass on the low side of the museum’s wooden building. Each year it seems to descend a bit lower. This building stands on the site of the school’s original schoolmaster’s residence, a brick four-room cottage (shown below), which, sadly, was demolished in the1960s. We think the circular depression might be the original brick-lined water cistern for the house. A water cistern is an underground tank. It would have been replaced with an above ground tank and then running water, leaving a large hole in the ground.
We’d love to do an archaelogical dig at the site. We think we’d find pieces of old plates, bottles and other household rubbish as the hole was the perfect place to dump your rubbish before the days of weekly waste collections. I wonder what else we’d find?