Buza Péter: Spring and Fountains - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1994)

should appear above the surface. Normally, these conditions are only present in mountainous or hilly areas, which is why local edge water springs are found, without exception, in the interior of the Buda Hills. These springs include the King Béla Well and the Város [City] Well on the side of Sváb Hill. The former is the water of the Buda side marl, which wells up at a temperature of 8.2-9.50 C. The Város Well springs forth at the dividing line between the layers of fresh water limestone and the Pannon clay. The third famous edge water spring is the 10-12° C one called Disznófő [Boar’s Head] in Zugliget. Its virtually inexhaustible water supply is held in the Buda marl layer, which assures an output of ten litres a minute. Less known but by no means insignificant edge water springs of Buda include the Lófej [Horse Head] Well in Jablonkai út, tapped in 1930, but by now neglected almost to the point of its disappearance, even though it yielded 11 litres of water a minute at a temperature of 12.6° C in 1953, and the springs welling forth on the north-eastern slope of Csúcs Hill-Kecske [Goat] Spring, Római Well and Egyetértés [Concord] Well.

Memories of an affluent past

Many of the springs can no longer be found in the parts of Buda which were civilized and frequented at an early time. In the twenties and thirties of this century, there were several attempts made at gathering all earlier references and scattered data concerning these springs. A 1934 publication makes mention of a sulphurous hot spring which used to well up in Hild Park on Ferenchalom in the mid-1900s. The old Szarvastelep [Deer Colony] was also known for having a similar spring. Even in 1934, people living in the neighbourhood could point out, in a corner of the Aldásy plot, the spring of the baths that had been there at one time. The soil here was generally wetter than elsewhere, vegetables did not grow in their beds, and every year the snow melted before it did in other places. Those living near by could well remember that when the foundations of an institute for the Mary Ward nuns were being layed, a hot water spring spouted up from the earth. A bricklayer mending a cellar also found a hot water spring, but his employer had it stopped immediately. (One wonders how many more caverns of various sizes have had the same fate on Rózsadomb in the last fifty years.) A well on Remete Hill used to yield ferrous water, but this did not survive into the 20th century. An abundant spring by the old tram terminus in Zugliget disappeared for good in a landslide, while two untapped springs near Disznófő were destroyed by neglect, even though these even had names-they were called Szarvas [Deer] Well and Hangya [Ant] Spring by our ancestors.

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