Spring house

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This article is about the structure. For other meanings, see Spring House (disambiguation).
A small spring house near Collegeville, Pennsylvania.

A spring house, or springhouse, is a small building used for refrigeration once commonly found in rural areas before the advent of electric refrigeration. It is usually a one-room building constructed over the source of a spring. The water of the spring maintains a constant cool temperature inside the spring house throughout the year. In settings where no natural spring is available, another source of natural running water, such as a small creek or diverted portion of a larger creek, may be used. Some people put jars of milk in a bucket suspended by a rope in an "open-mouth" well during hot weather. The main use of a spring house is for the long-term storage of food that would otherwise spoil, such as meat, fruit or dairy products. In some cases, a spring was used for this purpose without a springhouse.

The Tomahawk Spring spring house at Tomahawk, West Virginia was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.[1]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2009-03-13. 
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