Living North Magazine
Article about D Bell & Co published in "Living North Magazine", May 2008.
Traditional Skills in Modern Hands.
From the school-leaver listening to her ipod while dry-stone walling on a windswept Northumbrian moor to the working mum finding water with a wishbone shaped hazel twig in the North Pennines, there is a new breed of people breathing life into the region's declining traditional skills. In a new series, we meet some of the dynamic characters using crafts from the past to forge a bright future and halt the decline in heritage skills in the region.
Divine Inspiration
Since the beginning of civilisation man has searched for underground water to sustain him and historically, a dowser was used to find a water source for a dwelling before a builder laid his first stone. Fast-forward to the twenty first century and dowsers are in as great a demand as ever, yet people still have little understanding of the art, believing it to be shrouded in mystery and mysticism. Lucy Howard meets professional dowser Deborah Bell and discovers the practice is far less arcane than you would imagine - her pressures are those of any other working mum (except perhaps for accusations of witchcraft and rescuing coalminers from certain death.)
Deborah Bell paces across the fell, a wishbone shaped hazel twig held firmly in her grip, thumbs held out at angles. With a focus you can read on her thirty six year old face she strides out in a circle until the hazel takes over. The rod moves down and pulls her firmly, unequivocally to a point in the grass. She has found water. Seamus Heaney encapsulates the moment in his poem The Diviner:
The pluck came sharp as a sting.
The rod jerked down with precise convulsions,
Spring water suddenly broadcasting
Through a green aerial its secret stations.
Bell drives a stake into the point at which the reaction is strongest. The water source is marked. Many people think the dowser's job is now over, but for a professional finding water is just the beginning. She paces again in arcs from the source of the water, reading the reactions of her trusty hazel to plot depth, direction and quantity. Only then is she confident her work is done.
Then, like any other working mum Bell rushes to pick her two boys up from school and nursery, feed them and supervise homework. Based on her findings, the following day a ten tonne hydraulic drilling rig wielding nine inch drilling bits will attend the site and bore through rock and earth to the exact depth she has specified. At this point, if her findings are accurate, water will gush forth, biblical style. As each borehole costs thousands of pounds to drill, the wait between locating the drilling site and striking water can be agonising. "I can't settle until I get the call," she admits. "It's a huge responsibility that I don't take lightly". Her professionalism and care have given her an exalted status among the people she has worked for - particularly farming communities whose livelihoods depend on being able to water their crops and animals. "People around here think she's amazing," says one farmer's wife.
Bell has been finding water on and off for farmers, mining companies, country estates and private houses since discovering her 'gift' in her early twenties. Her maternal grandfather was a dowser and her father owned a drilling company, employing renowned local dowser Edwin Taylor to source his drilling sites. On a break from studying fine art at Sheffield University, Bell met Taylor at her family home - their meeting was to prove a pivotal moment in her life. Later that day, Taylor returned to their home and told Bell's father he believed his daughter had 'the gift' and would she like to have a go at dowsing. "Edwin used whale bone to dowse," Bell remembers. "He held one arm and I held the other and we paced out a site. The pull was extraordinary." It must have made an interesting sight: Taylor, the country gentleman immaculately attired in a tweed suit and tie illuminating an ancient skill for a twenty year old woman in jeans and trainers. Now deceased, Taylor wrote in his memoirs that, irrespective of age (children, unencumbered by prejudice often have a particular flair for dowsing) or background it takes a special kind of person to be a dowser. "He or she has to be a kind of passive individual with patience and a sense of humour." Bell agrees. "There has to be a calmness about a person to dowse successfully," she says. "It's no use if you're highly strung."
Taylor then broke a twig of willow from her garden and told Bell to practise with it. "I had definitely made a connection," she says "but it took lots of practise to turn it into anything meaningful. It took years for me to hone in on what my reactions actually meant. It's no secret that lots of people have the ability to dowse for water - some even say around seventy percent. But if you can't interpret the connection it becomes a worthless gift."
According to the British Society of Dowsers, to 'dowse' means quite simply to search, with the aid of simple hand held tools or instruments for things that are otherwise hidden from view. Its most common use is to find underground water, but it can also be used to search for other subterranean items such as archaeological remains, oil, minerals, tunnels and cavities. Although there is no clear scientific explanation to the process, there does appear to be a natural human faculty to locate water underground. While many struggle with the notion that human ability stretches into this dimension, it is widely accepted that animals in arid regions can locate water by pure instinct.
Edwin Taylor taught Bell that experience and knowledge must be gained before professional jobs are taken on. "Creep before you walk is a must with dowsing," he advises in his memoirs - something that Bell took to heart. Through her father's profession, she was able to explore and practise her newfound talent on drilling sites until she was satisfied she could use the skill in a practical, professional way. Once she started working, demand for her craft extended beyond the region and soon she was accepting jobs across Europe.
In the winter of 2004, teacher Jan Wood and her partner were having a house built on a hilltop in Andalucia. They found out the hard way that a dowser finding water does not necessarily guarantee an abundant water supply. "We needed to find water for the house and had used the services of a local dowser who had located what we thought was a spring" recalls Wood. "Unfortunately, when the well was dug, it turned out to be only a pool of brackish water." With the future of their building project now in the balance, Wood searched online to find a solution to their problem. "Deb and her father agreed to come out to Spain to find us a water source," says Wood. They were very busy that winter, working for farmers needing to find water for their animals after a summer of drought. "We thought that was a good recommendation, so were happy to wait." When they eventually came out to Spain, Wood was delighted when Bell found an underground spring, and was able to calculate exactly where and how deep to drill the well. "It was amazing to watch her work - she traced the path of the underground water down towards the village spring, which produced wonderful water for the villagers."
There are many common misunderstandings surrounding the practise of dowsing. "A woman once thought I was a white witch," Bell says with a grin, sipping tea and eating a hot cross bun (not the snack of choice for most witches I know). "Others think I'm some sort of fortune teller and hear voices. People don't understand it and therefore fear it," she shrugs. "All I can say is, I have a connection with the earth and with water in particular. It's an ancient skill and a fundamental one given that we all need water to sustain us. If something works, why knock it?" Water dowsing is often referred to as divining and in North America 'water-witching'. Considering the French word for dowser is sourcier and the word for witch is sorcier it is easy to see why many people make the mistaken connection with dowsing and the occult. One particular client refused to let Bell ride in his Landrover to the dowsing site, fearing her 'powers'.
While most professional women will come up against prejudice in one form or another during their working lives, as a dowser Bell has met with resistance on many levels. With a tiny frame, fair hair and elfin features she cuts an unlikely figure among the heavy machinery and male workforce of the drilling rigs. In her early days as a dowser she was asked to do a job for a mining company in Cumbria. Her arrival on site was initially met with acute scepticism and was a daunting prospect, particularly as she had been asked there in an effort to save lives - coal miners were heading for a fault in the coal seem and urgently needed to find the fault line or risk their lives when the mine-shaft flooded. "I react to changes in rock strata, but in a very different way to water," she explains. This enabled her to follow the line of the mine and find out exactly where the fault was. When she plotted the exact width and depth of the mine on their map after dowsing the site, their attitude towards her completely changed. "They suddenly became very helpful," she smiles. Bell spent the day following the mine until she could identify where the fault was and keep the miners out of danger. "People may be sceptical, but when you produce results they usually manage to suspend their disbelief!" she says.
A bad day at work for some may mean an endless meeting, unreasonable customers or a grumpy boss while a bad day for Bell can result in a costly mistake for her clients. She has learnt through experience to be guided by her instincts and never to commit until she is sure. Once, when a client was involved in a boundary dispute, she was forced to estimate some of her calculations as she was denied access to the full 'circle' of the site. This time water wasn't struck. "Fortunately, I was able to return and rectify the mistake, but I learnt the hard way that I have to be one hundred percent sure before I report my findings." She would rather not be told any information about a site before she dowses preferring to be guided only by her hazel rod. "I'd rather have a blank canvas," she says. In his memoirs her mentor, Edwin Taylor agrees that information from third parties can be misleading. He explains, "Wishful thinking can trick a dowser. For example, if you listen to a client who tells you where pipes and drains are you must beware. It is better not to accept any information until the dowsing survey is complete." Bell agrees. "When you've been doing it for a while you do make observations," she says. "Trees that have been struck by lightening often have water under them. But that doesn't inform my dowsing, it's just an observation that comes afterwards."
Refreshingly, Bell seems unconcerned with the search for an explanation for her talent, but she does believe it is bound up in her sensitivity to electricity, magnetism and water. The closest I have come to an explanation of the skill came from a German physicist, Professor Hans-Dieter Betz, who carried out extensive research into water detection methods in Africa in the mid-nineties. He believes that it is not a biological sensitivity that allows the dowser to detect water, but that in a hypersensitive state, the dowser senses subtle electromagnetic gradients resulting from the fissures and water flows creating changes in the electrical properties of rock and soil.
"To me, it's just my job, it's what I do," Bell explains. "It's no different from a woman going out to work in an office to support her family. To my boys I'm just 'Mum', and my job is making their dinner." She looks at her trusty hazel twig, the only tool of her trade. That and her mobile phone which rings while she dowses. Evidently, juggling the ancient and the modern has become second nature for this multi-tasking mother.