Painted from an old photo as a gift for an older relative who remembers the family spring house.

Built over the place where a natural spring bubbled up out of the ground, spring houses were a good way to keep the water pure, and they were a natural refrigeration. On the hottest day in the summer the water bubbling up from an underground source, or spring, stays at a temperature of about 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

The point of the springhouse was to provide a cool space and fresh water. Stone-lined channels were carefully build to take full advantage of the spring water that naturally flowed through the spring house. Stone shelves were arranged at various levels around the small pool created by the bubbling spring so that milk pans, butter, etc., could be set on them. Milk, buttermilk, and liquids could be placed in glass or earthenware jugs and set directly into the water on these ledges to chill them. Other foods, such as eggs and meat and produce, could simply be left inside the structure on shelves and hooks around the walls to absorb the pleasant chill created by the cold water bubbling up from the source.

So the spring house was an older method of refrigeration before ice delivery and electricity were around. It also kept your perishables safe from animals. The constant temperature of the water coming from under the ground would keep the foods cool during the summer but also keep them from freezing in the winter.

Some earlier ones were more primitive, simply dug into a hillside with a wooden front, but later ones were stone, stuccoed over like this one. An open door was the only light...or a candle, oil lamp, or later a flashlight. I love the tales told by the old ones of their ingenious ways in the past.

Please advise…anything needing corrected or touched up before matting and framing? Thanks!