912 – Well House from Appenzell Inner-Rhodes, 19th/20th Century (Reconstruction)

Building Kit

This timber frame structure is as simple as a child’s construction set: the fields between the columns are filled with planks, enclosing the well on three sides. A shed roof protects the well from contamination, rain and, above all, snow and raw winds. The water trough is a long tree trunk hollowed out by a gouging axe. Trough, well house and their location close to the multipurpose building are typical for Appenzell country.

Precious Resource

Showering, making coffee, brushing teeth, flushing toilets, washing hands – if the water supply is interrupted for a few hours in today’s world we are nonplussed. In many places only a few decades ago water still had to fetched from well to house in buckets. Water consumption bore restraint. Various buildings show how much constructional expense and how much daily work was entailed in obtaining water, for instance the cistern next to the house from La Recorne (112) or the groundwater wellhouse from Wimmis (323) with its closed well house like a small hut on the alp.