Cseri Miklós - Horváth Anita - Szabó Zsuzsanna (szerk.): Discover Rural Hungary!, Guide (Szentendre, Hungarian Open Air Museum, 2007)

VIII Bakony, Balaton-Uplands - VIII-5 Roman Catholic Church from Óbudavár

VIII Well and wash-house, Köveskál This karst spring with a plentiful supply of water was called the village well when mentioned in 18th century documents, nowadays it is called town well. The well-building and the attached washhouse with stone walls and gabled roof was possibly built after 1823, the year when Köveskál became a market town. The building has been reconstructed to its renovated 1920s appearance with a purlin roof thatched with reed. At one time the wash-house was roofless and basin-like. Water was drawn from the stone-curbed well with a hook and was poured through the openings on the two side-walls into two stone troughs for watering animals. The water of the karst spring ran from the stone basin of the wash-house into the fields to irrigate the cabbage fields. Women stood on the planks above the water to rinse the clothes. Washing Linen was washed with burnt lye made from wood-ash. Dirty clothes were soaked and put into a wooden bucking-tub, standing on a base. There is a hole in one of the staves which could be closed with a plug. Coarse-textured linen was spread on the top and sifted wood-ash scattered on it. Boiling water was then poured on top until the water running off it was clean. The leached linen was cooled, taken out of the bucking-tub and carried to the stream or the wash-house where it was beaten with a dolly and soaked in water to remove the lye.