Storage Well
Purpose / Function
A type of simple storage used to contain valuables, tools and useful items for continued usage. In its most rudimentary form, it is a hole dug within the floor of a dwelling, covered with a panel of boards. The main purpose of such wells was to prevent misplacement of tools, since weather events could cause tools to fall off the edge of islands, making them inaccessible and costing inordinate amounts of time, energy and materials to create new tools.
Alterations
In improvements from its rudimentary form, it is not uncommon for storage wells to be outfitted with a wooden hinged trap door to mitigate tripping hazards, covered with rugs or furniture to conceal an entrance and mitigate risk of burglary, or in some rare cases, be booby-trapped.
Architecture
A dug-out, indoor cache is usually understood to be a storage well if it is not a basement, cellar or something within which a person can walk and access storage along the walls. Structures of these kinds are regarded as basements or cellars, partially due to design, and partially due to purpose of storing dry goods such as dried grains, beans, lentils, and other foodstuffs.
History
Alterations of these kinds to homes and in communities in some public capacities were common in the cultural and material time period known as Early Post-Upheaval Scarcity, which regarded retention of items that might be considered junk today since the creation of tools came at the cost of precious time, energy and non-renewable materials. As more efficient methods for tool-making and more efficient tools were devised, storage wells became less common. Nowadays, storage wells are uncommon among settled civilizations in private homes. Storage wells still find use in societies which continue to experience elevated scarcity and in communally-oriented societies in public fashion, usually called goodwill wells, or public caches.
Alternative Names
Any combination of the two sets of words "cellar", "storage", and "keepsake"; and "hole", "pit", "well", "cache". Names used often depend on the region from which one hails.
Type
Room, Common, Cellar
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