“Dig deeper!” the prospector cried.

Imagine digging a hole in the earth only 4 ft wide, being lowered on a ladder into a dark, narrow passageway down to nearly 1285 ft. That’s a quarter of a mile deep –with only a candle for light. That’s deeper than the height of the Empire State Building and 850 feet below sea level. And imagine using only hand tools to chip away at stone and earth, piling it all into buckets to be raised to the top, one bucket at a time. Now imagine doing that for 24 hours a day for four years!

That’s how Woodingdean Well was built –the deepest hand-dug water well in the world, located in Woodingdean in the UK.*

The digging took place from 1858-1862. It took 438 feet to reach water, but when it did, the men had to quickly scramble to the surface, as the water bubbled…