Dowsing Water firms are using divining rods to find water. Can they really work?

Nestling in the shadow of a white horse and a Neolithic long barrow, in a renowned crop circle hotspot, Alton Priors, in Wiltshire, feels like the perfect venue for a spot of water witchery. Prompted by the news that Thames Water and Severn Trent Water use dowsing rods to detect water leaks, I’ve arranged to meet my mother, Isobel – a geologist and amateur dowser – to investigate the phenomenon.

- Linda Geddes

Alton Priors lies on the boundary between a chalk escarpment and sandstone, the latter underlaid by clay, which means there are numerous springs gushing out of the ground. The local churchyard is also where an acquaintance of my mother once suggested she try dowsing, because “he just had a sense it would work there”. Sure enough, her rods crossed.

My mother isn’t generally prone to magical thinking. An expert on the geology of Wiltshire and a trained Blue Badge tourist guide, she was first given a pair of dowsing rods to demonstrate when she started taking tour groups around Stonehenge. To her surprise, the rods crossed, piquing her curiosity. Since then, she has discovered they cross for her over water, trees, ancient henges and barrows, as well as the long axis of churches.

To many this may sound like a classic case of confirmation bias: the tendency to interpret information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs. If you are expecting a pair of dowsing rods to cross in particular locations, and they do, that’s evidence that dowsing works.

There are other locations where my mother fully expected them to work, and they didn’t, such as iron age hill forts. She doesn’t know why they cross over certain features and not others, but they do – and she strongly suspects water is involved.

Joining us on this excursion is a photographer, who recounts how a friend recently called out the local water company to fix a leak in his back garden and the engineer used dowsing to locate the stopcock.

Hearing such anecdotes, I feel open to the possibility that dowsing might be able to detect water, even though my inner sceptic says there’s no logical explanation for it.