The skill it took to build that well is mind blowing.

Starting at around 10 years old, I was drafted for the job of periodically cleaning out my Grandfather's 30 foot well. First we had to dip out all the water with 5 gallon buckets lowered down with ropes, then I had to climb down the well using the rock lined wall as steps with one foot on each side of the well and a rope tied around my waist. Then I had to stand knee deep in freezing cold muck at the bottom and dip it out one bucket at a time, two at a time if my Dad was around to help Pap with pulling the buckets up. . Once through the 2 feet of muck, I had to dig out another several feet of sand that had washed in. The worst thing about it was going from freezing cold to 85 degrees when I came out of the well hours later, and then use a scythe to cut the grass in the field. Good times. Kids today don't know how easy they have it.

There’s something otherworldly about seeing down there knowing the person who dug the well was the last down there many many years ago.

Coming from a person that does water wells for a living (drilling, pump service, treatments and inspection) that's pretty impressive. I do big commercial stuff and seen many rock holes through a inspection camera. But all those are machine drilled. It amazes me every time I see old stuff like this.

Extraordinary craftsmanship when you truly think that each and every single rock was hand placed and built. Thank you for letting us view and explore with you. Certainly will hold the test of time.

As a rockhound and ameteur geologist, this is my take on this well. Almost all the rocks you see are for the most part high quality agate!! The stacked pieces are what they chipped off the walls to build this well. The presence of large quartz veins suggest the possibility of gold. And this well was incredibly difficult to excavate, as agate has a hardness of 9 to 11.5 on the MOH hardness scale, diamond is 10 . I also believe the water is present because of this huge deposit, or vein of agate. . Thanks for sharing this!

I had a stone lined well in my home I owned that was built in 1919. The original plow came with the house. The original owners were buried in the cemetery behind the house. The bricks and stones inside that well looked BRAND NEW and absolutely Stunning!

Never ever thought of it until this video but lining a well with rocks is probably quite the undertaking. Kind of impressive actually.

looked like a pair of groundhogs 😢 what a horrible way to die. Thank you for caring and covering these death traps to help save future lives ❤

This was a cool well drop. What do you think the poor little creatures are down there? EDIT: Watch the vid at 1/2 speed when underwater to see more. Special thanks to all of my supporters over on Patreon! Follow Chigg’s Army! My Patreon: www.patreon.com/aquachigger Instagram: instagram.com/aquachigger/ Facebook: facebook.com/chiggsarmy/ Twitter: twitter.com/BeauOuimette T-Shirts: www.bonfire.com/store/aquachigger/ Thanks for watching…. The Chigg

The amount of labor that that it took to dig and line the well with rock is mind boggling. Respect for the men that did it.

So cool it's amazing how stacked rock done properly can last centuries an it was crazy to see it all held up by some parts that looked like they came off an old wagon. With the original wood still mostly intact!

I didn't see a rock out of place. True testament to the builder/s. Especially if buckets may have been used up and down. Chigg, you wouldn't get me down there for quids!

You should contact the underwater drone guy and see if he can explore it better. He says it will work. I'm happy to hear you will cover it so no more poor creatures fall down the well. Amazing how they built this well and the rocks lining it were just so interesting and some were huge. Thanks for sharing Chigg.

0:05 hideous creature appears

When I was a kid we had a well like that...one day we discovered dirt in our water and had to give a look,this was before go-pro's so physical inspection required!It was discovered that rats had burrowed close to the edge and were knocking rocks in!This meant all out war on the vermin it took a hose from the van to the floor of an old shed we had.All other holes were blocked ,once the exhaust fumes worked my dad plugged them with a 222 rifle.There were many met their end that day,and we had clean water after that!Enjoy your videos they remind me of the good ole days.Thanks

Wow! The amount of effort it must have taken to have accomplished finishing this well is mind boggling! The rock formations at the bottom are also very interesting!

Fascinating to see how the walls were constructed. A 360 deg camera would be AWESOME, we could look around and check for cool stuff on the way down.

Hey chig if you see this message then ive got to thank you for inspiring me to go out and detect. It was VE Day yesterday (may 8th)here in the UK and it paid off i found a spent 20mm cannon shell dated 1942 fired in anger over western-super-mare beach during one of the battle on the severn estuary near Bristol. So thanks once again, i finally have a top pocket find in my books WWII relic woop woop.

So much work going into digging/building these wells back in the day. Just imagine the nightmare it was digging the Woodingdean well in the UK. 390 metres (1285 feet) deep. All by hand, in a very narrow shaft.

Lol, just as soon as the camera hit the water, a commercial popped up. I about jumped out of my skin!

Very well made well. The lining wall is well clad and smartly put together. Neat fact, if you look at the volcanic bedrock, you can actually see where they used the rods to "drill" into it to make the hole. There's several marks as the camera rotates around the 5 minute mark. Neat, neat, neat. Edit, especially visible at 5:48 two of them going oblique left to right.

I love things like this, very interesting! Such a shame the poor creatures drowned though. Back in the 80's we lived in a Victorian house and when my Dad was digging in the garden he found a huge stone slab. After many hours of trying to lever it up and hurting his back in the process, we found a well similar to that one under it. We didn't have any cameras or gear to go down and explore it, so dad built up a stone feature on top and put a cover over it. How i wish we could have gone down to see what was there!

That is really amazing to see those rocks lining the wall. Someone actually went down there and built that well. Incredible!

Doing that in europe would be awesome. I know where there is the underground part of a castle in a forest here in Austria.The father of my ex showed me before he passed away. He found it while working for the Earl as a forester when he was young. So like, 70 years ago. It is on private property, so it has not been explored yet. The castle was built around the 1300's. Was destroyed in the 30 year war, and a forest grew over it. The village it was named after, most likely used the stone of the castle to build houses, then it was forgotten. It is a secret I do not want to take to my grave.

Im always reminded of that little Jessica girl from like 30yrs ago whenever I see a well

Digging a well is similar to digging a mine. Make a hole and shore it up with wood when needed. When you hit water you install a pump then keep digging. When you can't keep up with water ingress you start building your rock lining and work your way up to the top. Gonna guess most wells started with a very wide hole so you have room to work and less dirt falling back in. As you go deeper you get narrower. As you line with rock you have a place to backfill with dirt, which becomes your water filter.

How did they accomplish that without it caving in on them? The rock lining looks like it was done yesterday not pre civil war. I’m impressed.

Oh boy, I just came in from metal detecting and sat down and now a Chigg video to watch🤠

I have an underwater drone with a robotic claw. I would love to have an opportunity to drop it into a well like this. You're videos are awesome but they always make me jealous because you get all the best spots. Keep up the good work, best of luck doing what you do.

the texturing of the solid rock is amazing...millions of years old

The hand dug well on my farm was done a long time before I was born. I'm retired now. The well is lined with a concrete pipe about 3 or 4 foot wide. It has wood with steel roofing material over the well but mice can easily get into it and contaminate the water. It will need cleaned up before using it for drinking water.

That was a first for me. The work that went into digging that well. WOW!!!

Nice. That well went way beyond the bedding plane and into the solid rock itself. When the well hit solid rock, you could see the geological bending of the natural rock.

The rock structure is fascinating, much different than you'd fine in a well in Northern Michigan, for example.

AMAZING workmanship, most especially in light of the fact that it appears that no mortar/cement was used in it's construction!

Amazing video. The super dangerous work is beyond belief. Can't imagine the labor needed. That bedrock formation is incredible

Pretty cool. I always wondered, who was 'chosen' to line these walls with bricks. Musta had alot of courage and faith in whoever was holding the rope.

I've lived in rural New Hampshire all my life, & I've spent much of my time roaming the woods. I've come across more old dug wells like this than i could count, but 2 really stand out: 1 i found as a kid that was covered with an old car door, & another massive 1 with a roof built over it. It was about 10 feet across, & it looked sketchy as hell. Thanks for the video, it brought back some memories i haven't thought of in a very long time. 🙂

Wow. That was an awesome video Chigg. The craftsmanship, the time, the courage it required to dig the well!

Interesting to see how the compressed sedimentary rock has been folded, over the many years.

Yeah you definitely wouldn’t want to drink that water, saw a couple dead coons floating in there. Very interesting, thanks for posting Chigg 👍🏼😎🇺🇸

Can't imagine anyone in the future looking back at our concrete structures are going to stand back and say "Wow, isn't that incredible workmanship!". I'm always amazed at the ingenuity and good old fashioned hard work of our ancestors.

I love old wells. Actually well water is the only water we have. I'm 40 and we have always used well water instead of that nasty city water. This was pretty cool to see down in one

Been down a few like that. Here in southern Ontario, I always hated when the gardener snakes would ball up in the rock crevices. The owner really needs to abandon it, which would be a shame and very costly, or maintain it, which would be costly. If a child falls in....those costs pale in comparison.

Extreme Caution! Those tons of stones look stacked and not very mortared together. You need the best head protection and a rescue team on hand if you decide on rappelling that.

The skill and time and effort to build that well originally is mind blowing and probably the most fascinating part about this video. Yet these wells are everywhere and ninety percent of the time nobody has any idea who originally built it. Just so weird how many places and things there are like that everywhere.

This actually made me sad, we had ancestors who built a awesome well with stone they had to move from somewhere else and the line the well after digging it out. Look at our country now, people now would never survive having to do anywhere near that !! 😣😣

What beautiful clear water! And you can only imagine the magnitude of the earthquakes it took to bend those bedding planes at such torturous angles !

Cool! At 3:16 it could have looked like an ivory colored ring might have been lodged in the rocks, or it's just an illusion.

Who today would even think about digging a well like that? How did they even know they would hit water? My hats off to the person who dug that!!👍

What an achievement to build that well in the first place great upload thank you

People did the things they did out of necessity. They knew what was required, rolled up their sleeves, and did the work. The work was usually masterful. Very different from the people of today.

That was one of your more interesting well drops! In to solid rock and all the dry stone work! There was some talent and old world know how went into digging that one! Totally fascinating!

Poor camera hanging on for dear life like "ya got me bro? Ya sure? Shouldnt we add another line to me? You wouldnt leave me if i fell...Right?" 😂😂

Thanks so much, your video tells it all about what it looks like inside a hand-dug well.

The quartz veins are really interesting....that was super cool! Thanks chig another awesome adventure!!!

That pump jack is aprox late teens early 20s retro fitted with a flat belted electric motor later at some point. Most likely the windmill portion was pre-pumpjack era and then the jack was installed with a large flat belt pulley to some sort of engine, and then later equipped as you see it, then shortly abandoned after that. The well for sure being the earliest part of the design, again with most likely a rope n' bucket arrangement.

I never realized or even thought about people actually going down and building these wells many years ago! Blows my mind! This was very interesting to watch and see what is down there...i just so happened to come across this video by accident and must say I was not disappointed!

Pretty obvious it's a tapped ancient tree. Once ya get under the stacked rock, it's easy to see the tree structure. Great video

That's a deep well. Great video Chigg, thank you.

A good place to drop a magnet first. Back about 1959, Dad, Grandpa and I dug a well on the old ranch. It was 40' deep when the walls got damp. We dug another 8 or 10 feet and then began the rock ,lining. The next morning it was 6' deep in water. It took almost a week to line and cap it. We dumped chlorine bleach in it and used the ground level cam pump to pull water until it was clean. Nothing I wanted to do again. Ever!

You find the most unique things to show us! The well is beautifully made by a true craftsman back in his day! And, right you were, real rock towards the bottom. Wish I could have seen the bottom of my 120 y/o ggms and ggas homes. Loved it!👏👏👍👍🥰🥰

Besides the incredible craftsmanship of the well, at 2:56 some webbing but they are everywhere though out I see a green thing, plant or bug at 3:54 who knows, At 3:16 theirs what looks like roots or a snake sticking out of the stone rocks 4:22 looks like wooden beams down there if that’s what they are then they survived 200 years in a well. 5:16 you can see a hole between but at 5:46 you can see it’s blocked or we are looking at a different angle but as we go in to the water here it’s hard to tell if there’s a passage way from that curved hole possibly there is a vertical tunnel in the water that’s been covered up over by dirt trees and such and water , 6:00 obviously a dead creature possibly a rat or a groundhog but turns out its not alone there’s another dead something at the top far left at 6:12 At 5:00 and 7:36 there’s some visible scratches in the rocks maybe, that the creatures tragically fell and the creatures tried to get out as the well filled up , died from drowning or starving, either fell or they came from the bottom who knows, as they looks like 2 two of them in there, hopefully not a family died down there Anyway very cool little area and bit of year history in the well thanks for sharing Chigg

This is soooo great! I would LOVE to go out doing something like this. It is such a treasure just waiting to be explored❤️. You guys did an amazing job with the steadiness of the camera.

How in the hell did they know if they dug that deep , that there would be water ? Sure looked like a good amount of hard work to get that far down

The whole process must have taken years. It really is mind boggling

Outstanding brother!!! Cant imagine blasting that deep....light fuse and get pulled up quickly!!!! Just beautiful, Thank you so much!!

Looked kind of like a groundhog to me, but I only saw the one.

Fun fact: If you look up out the opening of a tall smokestack or a deep well in the daytime you see - not blue sky - but the night-time sky with stars !

Обалдеть, как много труда было затрачено, чтобы построить такой колодец. Спасибо за интересное видео.

These are common in Pennsylvania. My Dad our friend George still use this type of well. There's one by my house too. I don't use it but it still has water in it. My cistern is made of stone and holds 3000 gallons of water. I still use it. I've been in them to clean them out. It's a strange feeling looking up from the bottom seeing the sunlight and cloud's going over.

At 6:00, you can see the carcass of an animal floating just under the surface. Not sure exactly what the poor guy was, but I can only hope that he didn't suffer too much in that cold, dark place.

That was beautiful! The stacked stones and then the striations on the rocks...wow! How did they build this stuff?!

In Union CT there's a well like this inside the house! That must've been a luxury!

Best video on the internet this morning very interesting stuff. I thought it was fascinating they kept digging right through the bedrock until they found water below it. I couldn’t understand where the water was coming from tho. I know aquifers are a porous substrate that water can flow through but that all looked like solid rock down there. Super cool video tho and very interesting

I always hope to see a box hidden in the side going down .

You know you're getting old when you refer to something from the 1920's as a "newer addition". lol I wonder what that little loop-like metal thing is at 3:16 around the bottom right center.

"what is it old yeller?', "Johnny fell down the well again"?? 🤣🤣

Mesmerizing excursion down the well. Unfortunate, woodland creature's place of eternal rest. Bless them. Grateful that you explore, then close these primitive, yet amazing feats of engineering. Respect to the olden ways, as to me it appears that we are losing the ingenuity, resourcefulness and wherewithal of our forefathers to progress. Thanks for sharing.

That's amazing, how in the world did they dig this?

I always wonder how they built a well. Very interesting.

Mmmm .... ground hog water haven't had that stuff in years😅

The video was nice but for me it was the animals at the end, hoping they bring you joy for more years to come

Amazing how dry the walls are. I always think of wells as being damp and slimy. How deep was it?

Good on you for always trying to cover up holes to keep forest buddies from falling in Chig. You couldn't save the fellows down there but your actions will make sure more don't fall in.

Gotta say Chigg, this was a fantastic video. Really good steady work with the camera. I felt like I was on the rope. Great job

OMG Reminded me of … "It rubs the lotion on its skin Or else it gets the hose again" Silence Of The Lamb's" 😳 It rubs the lotion on its skin Or else it gets the hose again … Australia here, Watching this video made me think, There are Hundreds if not thousands of Deep Deep Mining holes used for Opals, Gold e.t.c In Coober Pedy in the State of South Australia. These Holes are not Covered. Would Really be Interesting to put this Thing Down these Old Mining Holes to see what's Down there. Like you said at the start. May be a Serial killer's Dumping ground of Hooman's or Innocent Animal's.. Scary 😥😲 Thank You for this Wonderful video.. Amazing How This Well Was Built so Precisely back then. Kindest Thoughts To You and your family from The State of Victoria in Australia. 🦘🇭🇲🌏

This is really cool! Anyone have a link to a vid that shows how these were made? Seems like scary work.

Do not disturb the water. You never know what's living beneath the surface.

A very good Monday morning to you all in the USA from Wellington Somerset in the UK

Having watched WAY to many horror movies and having read EVERYTHING Stephen King has written, I still get the heebie-jeebies when I watch one of these explorations of old wells. Even more frightening are these kids that explore old caves and mines that go on for ever and they squeeze into some tight places, I keep waiting for Pennywise to pop up with a handful of balloons clutched in one claw. Keep up the great videos. I can't imagine the manpower and time it took to construct these wells. Back in PA where I grew up, there were some old houses across the street from our house that were on property that the Philadelphia Suburban Water Company bought up (plus a lot more) that were torn down in the mid to late 50's after they finished installing the dam which was actually quite large. Directly across the road from us I stumbled upon an old well that was filled in, but sinking in a field we played in and another kid narced us out and the water company dumped 2 loads of fill on top of it and that was that. It gave me bad dreams for a couple of weeks (as I said I watched all sorts of bad "B" movies back then) and it scared the crap out of me. It's a shame that as a kid you don't think to mark out locations of old wells and houses that were razed to make way for a reservoir. There were a lot of older houses around. Lot of history lost and there is no information in the archives from the water company and our local rag never bothered to microfiche the old papers and all of the old times who WERE alive back then are all long gone.

When the creature appears

I would love to know how you setup the camera and light. Apparently you were able to pan in all directions and the light was really bright. Great video!

Can't imagine the labor of putting all those stones in place.

Still in great shape. Hats off to the people that built it. RIP critter.

I wasn't sure wells like this actually existed. Holy crap, amazing!

Did you ever happen to go back and find out what that strange face shaped rock was on the wall in that one cave video?

That triggered my claustrophobia really effectively. Great well. Skillful work.

I missed the creature. The veins of gold stood out. Good for you!!