The pump
Near the retirement home, in a small village square, there’s a brick hand pump sheltering one of the village’s two old wells, which we know existed as early as the 11th century. Due to droughts, and to make drawing water easier, in 1841 the well was equipped with a hand pump which can still be seen today, even though it is no longer in working order.
This serves as a reminder that the village of Grimaud struggled for centuries with water shortages. In an effort to solve this problem, the people of Grimaud built a large-scale system to bring water from a spring in Mont-Roux, where the Pont des Fées was used as a siphon bridge based on the principle of communicating vessels to guide water to the village. Unfortunately, this system was not the great success they had hoped for.
