In defence of dowsing to detect water | Letters

Guardian readers share their stories on the success of dowsingRe your article "Water firms admit they still use 'medieval' dowsing rods" (22 November): in the 1950s, our family lived on a farm in an isolated part of northern Somerset. The farmer submitted an application for planning permission to build two new houses in a field, including details of water supply and drainage (there were no mains services at all). He had already walked over the field with his L-shaped birch twig, and we watched as the point of the L creaked downwards in his hands as he walked over a spot he had marked on the ground. A man from the water board arrived and looked at the site with geological maps. After half an hour he said "it's anyone's guess", went back to his van and brought back his own birch twig. When he walked across the mark, the point of the L creaked upwards in his hands. He said that was the right place to dig a well, which the farmer and my father dug, and it never dried up.I believe that when dowsers were tested many years ago, they were taken to a field under which was an underground reservoir. None of them located water. The farmer in Somerset told us that his own technique of dowsing only locates running water, so the reservoir would not have been indicated by this method. Continue reading...