The Maharajah's Well

In 1831, Mr Edward Reade, the squire of Stoke Row in the Oxfordshire Chilterns and Lieutenant Governor of the North Western Provinces, was chatting to his friend the Maharajah of Benares about water shortage problems.

'The scenery' (of that part of India) Mr Reade told the Oxford Times in 1872, 'is not unlike that of the Chiltern Hills: the inconveniences, owing to deficiency of water supply were the same. The measures the Maharajah was adopting for the relief of his people were the subject of much of our conversation, in the course of which it would seem I must have mentioned the result of boyish knowledge in the upland of my own district, such as the people being dependent for water retained in dirty ponds and eserted clay-pits. In dry seasons the water used for cooking in one cottage was passed on to do the like office in others, urchins being cruelly thumped for furtive quenchings of thirst and washing days being indefinitely postponed.'

And so the Maharajah set up a charity to help the people of England. That in itself is extraordinary, and salutary, for we always think of charity going out of Britain to the global South. The Maharajah had been educated in England, and he was fond of the country, and fond of Mr Reade, apparently. That's how the people of this rural Chilterns village found themselves with this edifice in their midst.