John Knox House, Old Town, Edinburgh, Scotland

Another wonderful piece of Edinburgh Old Town history outside John Knox House on the High St, part of the Royal Mile.

This wellhead is the oldest of the surviving cisterns found dotted around the Old Town. These old wellheads provided water from the Castlehill Reservoir for the inhabitants of the Old Town.

This example is the Netherbow Wellhead and was originally built around 1675, and was repaired and restored in 1997.

By the 1780s, this system could not provide enough water for the city's growing population. To limit demand, the water was only turned on for three hours, at midnight. Those who could afford it paid water caddies to collect their water for them, to avoid getting up in the middle of the night!