Does anyone know anything about the Ebbing and Flowing Well near Giggleswick, Settle, North Yorks?

It's located on the north side of the B6480 that runs through Settle and Giggleswick, Grid Reference SD 80535 65235 (or thereabouts).

I've visited it a few times, and on occasion I've seen the ebbing and flowing motion that the well is renowned for. It has been mentioned in several books, including "The History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven" by T. D. Whitaker, 1878 and earlier editions.

This website http://megalithix.wordpress.com/2008/09/12/ebbing-flowing-well-giggleswick-north-yorkshire-holy-well/ has some information, including lots of books in which it is mentioned, but I can only find a few of these.

I'm interested in the source of the water, the cause of the ebbing and flowing, the caves in Giggleswick Scar which is just above the well, and generally anything to do with that area.

Cheers,

Hannah

There is a description and diagram in An Illustrated Guide to the Curiosities of Craven by William Howson , 1850 that you should find as free book on the web.  I make no claims as to the validity of an 1850 explanation.  If you were to get lost and accidentally wander into the now closed quarry you would see the remnants of some very old passages all choked and below the level of the known caves on the scar.

There's actually a lot of information available in all sorts of books about his site - and about ebbing and flowing springs in general. I was actually idly looking at some videos of it, i think on YouTube, not long ago. I remember watching a sort of stop motion video of it siphoning, which was quite effective. I've never actually seen it do this myself.

If you can tell us a bit more about why you're interested it might help folk supply the information you want. For example, if you are interested in intermittent springs generally then there are better examples. THE one to see in the uK is Speedwell Cavern's Whirlpool Rising. Slightly further afield (in France) is the Fontaine De Fontestorbes (at the Eastern end of the Pyrenees not far from Carcasonne); if you Google on that you'll probably find loads of stuff about it.

I remember the late Keith "Ben" Bentham making a simple model to illustrate siphoning from a bit of hose pipe and an old one gallon plastic tub, which I can probably describe if this is of interest?

Pitlamp said:

I remember the late Keith "Ben" Bentham making a simple model to illustrate siphoning from a bit of hose pipe and an old one gallon plastic tub, which I can probably describe if this is of interest?

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It is! I feel a Blue Peter moment coming on... 

Pitlamp said:

I remember the late Keith "Ben" Bentham making a simple model to illustrate siphoning from a bit of hose pipe and an old one gallon plastic tub, which I can probably describe if this is of interest?

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Go on then - its of interest to me.

Yes go on sound fascinating

Oo, er - I didn't expect such interest. OK then, after the pub one evening we were all upstairs in the old kitchen at the Chapel discussing sumps which siphon and Main Rising in particular when Ben quietly said it was easy to understand and he could probably make a model of one just from bits in the garage downstairs. He wandered downstairs whilst we got stuck into our carry outs and forgot all about him.

10 minutes later he reappreared, carrying a 4.5 litre plastic container with the top cut off. Partway down one wall there was a short (say 200 mm) bit of curved hosepipe stuck through a hole in the wall (an interference fit) such that each end hung down (in the form of an inverted "U"). He stuck the device in the sink, with the tap pouring water in from above. He warned us that it might take a moment to get it working because the flow rate from the tap above had to be right. Once he got it going the container would slowly fill up and when the water level reached the level of the apex of the hosepipe suddenly the whole lot siphoned out quickly. With the tap still running the container slowly filled up again until the next siphon action emptied it again - and so on. The cycle took about 3 minutes in total and, as long as the flow from the tap was more or less the same, it would keep going intefinitely. The effect was that the flow from the hosepipe increased and decreased, just like Main Rising in Speedwell. Also the level of water in the container went up and down regularly, just like the Ebbing & Flowing Well.

Once we'd recovered from our amazement he then went on to explain, with lots of complex diagrams, all sorts of other devices that performed similarly. He offered to get the bits together the following weekend for further demonstrations if we were still unconvinced. He also explained, very clearly, how such arrangements might occur naturally in caves to account for some of the very impressive intermittent springs around the world. The tragedy is that we should have persuaded him to write it all down as a permanent record. Alas, it wasn't to be.

Ben was capable of some quite profound thinking at times and on that occasion he really excelled himself. The word "genius" wouldn't be inappropriate.

fascinating thank you 

Pitlamp said:

10 minutes later he reappreared, carrying a 4.5 litre plastic container with the top cut off. Partway down one wall there was a short (say 200 mm) bit of curved hosepipe stuck through a hole in the wall (an interference fit) such that each end hung down (in the form of an inverted "U"). He stuck the device in the sink, with the tap pouring water in from above. He warned us that it might take a moment to get it working because the flow rate from the tap above had to be right. Once he got it going the container would slowly fill up and when the water level reached the level of the apex of the hosepipe suddenly the whole lot siphoned out quickly. With the tap still running the container slowly filled up again until the next siphon action emptied it again - and so on. The cycle took about 3 minutes in total and, as long as the flow from the tap was more or less the same, it would keep going intefinitely. The effect was that the flow from the hosepipe increased and decreased, just like Main Rising in Speedwell. Also the level of water in the container went up and down regularly, just like the Ebbing & Flowing Well.

Click to expand...

That sounds like the way a symphonic toilet works. Pan has an inverted U tube going out of the back of it. When the cistern has filled the pan to above the level of the apex of the U tube, the pan empties itself, sucking out any contents at the same time. Then the water level rises in the pan again - but by this time the ball-cock in the cistern has come into play, so the water in the pan stays at its normal resting level.

Is that right?

Diagram:

kay said:

That sounds like the way a symphonic toilet works. ...
Is that right?

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The science might be, but not sure about the spelling

The noises in my toilet can rarely be likened to a symphony...

Where the hell did that  come from? It was "syphonic" as it left my brain!

But yes, I think Roger W's pic makes it clear that that's exactly how a toilet works!!

Pitlamp said:

the container would slowly fill up and when the water level reached the level of the apex of the hosepipe suddenly the whole lot siphoned out quickly. With the tap still running the container slowly filled up again until the next siphon action emptied it again - and so on. The cycle took about 3 minutes in total and, as long as the flow from the tap was more or less the same, it would keep going intefinitely.

Click to expand...

Willie Stanton made similar devices, called flopjacks, as automated dig-face washing machines; collecting water from a variety of sources, piping it to the flopjack and having the outflow hosepipe directed onto muddy boulders would mean they would be clean by the next return digging trip, making for easier clearance work with washed rocks and separated gravels etc.. There are examples of these machines still in situ in Reservoir Hole and Grebe Swallet.

Thanks Pitlamp can you remember any of the 'other devices' - got me fascinated now! Ben was indeed capable of profound thinking and could dig more on his own than typically two others digging - including of course having to cart the away the spoil every time the bucket was full. Great diagrams Roger - made it all very clear.

What a neat idea for a garden water feature. A pond that mysteriously empties itself without warning!

Chris.

With your very own Ebbing and Flowing Well in your garden, you might even become famous and appear on the TV!

The thing that controls the performance, of course, is the ratio of inflow to outflow.  The flushing system in the gent's at our church works on a very slow inflow and a massive outflow that siphons the contents of the cistern out in one fast flush...  But if you throttle down the siphon so that the flow rate out only just exceeds the flow rate into the pool you should get a nice slow filling and emptying that will fascinate your friends and neighbours.      :

Cheers Pitlamp.

I assume the flow conditions have to be very exact.

If the filling is too slow, or the outlet too big, then surely it will just flow out the other side at the same rate it flows in.  :-\

Come on, Sam.  You must have siphoned a sump or two in your time!

For this set-up to work, the level in the pool has to be able to rise high enough to fill the siphon tube up to the top of the bend.  After that, the siphon effect takes over and tries to empty the pool.

If the rate of inflow is greater than the siphon can carry away, you don't get any magic effect at all.  Some of the water - as much as the "siphon" tube will carry - will flow out that way and the level will continue to rise in the pool until the water finds somewhere else to leak out or overflow.

If the rate of inflow is less than the siphon can carry away, then the water will be siphoned away faster than it's flowing in and the level in the pool will fall until the entrance to the siphon tube is exposed and air can enter, thus breaking the siphon.  The water will then stop flowing out, and won't start flowing again until the level in the pool has risen high enough to re-start the siphon.

If the inflow and outflow are exactly equal....  Well, then I suppose it would just siphon out at exactly the same rate as it flows in, and the water level would stay constant.  But you would have to exactly match the flows.

In a natural situation, the outflow rate - depending on the dimensions of the passage in the rock - may be expected to remain constant, but the inflow rate should vary with rainfall, etc.  So the ebbing and flowing effect would also be expected to vary from day to day/month to month depending on the weather.

Here's a YouTube video:

Ebbing and Flowing Well, giggleswick

Roger W said:

Come on, Sam.  You must have siphoned a sump or two in your time!

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Indeed I have..

For this set-up to work, the level in the pool has to be able to rise high enough to fill the siphon tube up to the top of the bend.  After that, the siphon effect takes over and tries to empty the pool.

Click to expand...

No - not strictly true. if the water exiting the system, only trickles over the top of the 'bend' on the outflow, and is not sufficient in volume to completely fill the exit tube to a point below level of the main 'sump pool', no vacuum effect will be created, and the water will just continually flow through the system at the same rate.

If you can imagine trickling water into your toilet slowly, the sump in the u bend does not get sucked out, the water just overflows down the other side into the sewer at the same rate as you pour it in.