I filled in an open well in the backyard of the property we occupy. When the land was purchased there was no evidence of a structure but plenty of really old apple trees around on it. The well was an open stone lined one that anyone could have fallen into. If there was once a cover it had probably rotted away. I just found it accidentally while looking over the ba the property after purchase.. Anyone could have fallen in.

As we excavated for the house foundation a rock footing wall was located. Someone had scavenged the stones down to ground level.So I decided to find out a little more. Turns out their was a structure still existing on the property in the early 1940s.

Apparently a German national with a travelling circus was shut down and he was interned. Some of the animals where kept here. Lions or tigers on this property I was told. I have no ideal what ultimately happened to the large cats.

Up on the adjacent property the elephant was kept in a barn and died there. All the property along the road for three miles or so was part of a free land grant to the deserving under the English class system originally I suspect. Probably a thousand acres or better. I assume the structure present on our property at one time was some type of pioneer structure.

For what it is worth if the water tested really good in an old stone well. Plus the septic system where a decent distance removed from it. I would not just fill it in today.

Instead since it would cost almost nothing to set it up properly for further potential use. Probably about the same as closing it off forever. The taste of the water for example may be better or worse than your three hundred footer. Or you may someday have a ground shift or something impact the deeper well.

Once the stone well is filled in it is lost to time. Depending on the gallonage your deep well can deliver. It would not surprise me if your surface ground water well might supply more volume in the case of a fire or whatever.

I think the well that was on this property was so early that water was perhaps recovered from it by bucket. I saw no piping at all. Logically there was no electricity available anywhere when the pioneer house or large cabin was built on this site.

It is possible someone may have put some form of temporary pump system on it to water the animals by the early forties. There are cheap pumps out there that could be installed and not activated for a standby well. I would do a test pump of the well to see what it can deliver.

It is a pretty safe bet that on the year of my birth. Lions or tigers or perhaps even both occupied our property. The elephant on top of the hill died there I was told.

There was a German POW camp in town. I have heard that they were let out to work on peoples houses etc. Probably on local farms as well. Apparently the local population and them got on well together. I guess basically free or nearly free labor was always attractive. I wondered who where the caretakers for the animals here. The paved road out front was still just a dirt road

So it must not have been unusual to have German POW soldiers walking around town during the second world war to some extent. Logically there was no real flight risk.

The town was packed with industries servicing the war effort though. I still from time to time still find out interesting things about the town of 10,000 we live three miles or so from. Yet nobody has written a book that I have noticed.

Some of the founding fathers of the Canadian constitution lived here and one of them had a drug store here that was in continuous operation until only a year or two ago. No doubt the oldest drug store in continuous operation in Canada up till the time of it's closure.

I guess after your post on discovering an old well got me thinking about it. I will now spend some time trying to locate at least the details of who originally had this property as a bulk grant. I saw an early map that indicated it was one.

Then subdivided it and to who. With some indication there may have been even other owners afterwards.

Incidentally the local codes state an unused well must be closed down. I do not always see this as the best decision. In some cases it is the best course of action but not in all in my opinion. For some just capped off properly for further use if the need ever occurs.

We have in excess of twenty gallons a minute available on our drilled well. I usually had wells drilled in the driest part of the year. As usual the well driller wanted to go even deeper. I told him if there was any difficulty he could come back. On another property we developed that had old structures. There was a 60 foot 6 inch drilled well. Plus a two hundred and fifty foot drilled well to service a pig barn many years ago. I put the new house on the 60 foot well as there had been no trouble with it. It easily supplies the dwelling.

The two fifty foot well I just capped off. Technically if forced to totally eliminate it I would have made it into a garden supply well with pump and all even though not used to attempt to keep it legal. It costs a fair dollar locally to punch a hole down that far locally. Also If having a well drilled today I would still try to find a guy with an old impact driller setup. I have a gut feeling they will in general produce a good serviceable well at a lesser depth. I suspect the pounding fractures the area it is drilling through opening up better flow feeders. Where the rotary drill does not.

There was a valid point made by a poster. It is really wrong for anyone to have introduced a drain feed into a well. So I doubt it was a drain.