Drinking Water Society

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An adequate supply of drinking water was a crucial issue for medieval towns. Townspeople often addressed this problem by building a well on their property or digging one directly in their cellar. Public wells were also established alongside private ones.
Similarly, on castles, a well was often dug to channel water from water sources such as a nearby stream. Castle wells could reach enormous depths, in extreme cases over 100 meters.
Building a well was very expensive and not always possible. A more economical solution proved to be the installation of a cistern, a reservoir that resembled a well but did not have its own water source. Most often, rainwater was directed into such a cistern, where it was filtered and would be emptied out once a year.
In addition to acquiring water, its drainage was also addressed. The emergence of simple drains or conduits is evidenced by council regulations that required these drains to be deepened and maintained, led by the shortest route, and covered from above. In towns, especially, open ditches alongside paved roads were used for drainage.
Such a waste disposal system was bothersome to the population and was a source of odor, spreading infectious diseases and epidemics. Therefore, the originally open ditches were gradually covered, and later, brick sewers were constructed to channel rainwater from the streets and roofs of houses to the nearest watercourse or pond. However, the regularly recurring epidemics that spread across Europe demanded more radical solutions.

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