Dewponds and Pondmakers of the Yorkshire Wolds

Abstract

So wrote Rudyard Kipling with reference to the ponds of the southern Downlands of Sussex, but the quote is no less appropriate to the Yorkshire Wolds, where surface water supplies are rare and confined to a handful of spring-fed ponds set amongst the deeper valleys where the Chalk has been eroded through to expose the water-table above the underlying clays. The vast expanses of Wold tops are dry. In past centuries, pastured livestock had to be herded daily down to the village ponds or springs to drink. The enclosure of Wold townships during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries necessitated the provision of water on the Wold tops if animals were to be pastured within the new fields.