A SPRING on the Worcestershire Beacon dried up for the first time in living memory as Malvern continues to endure its driest period for 35 years.

And a Colwall farmer says that farming in the area is “on a knife edge” because so many springs and streams have dried up.

The Dripping Well, on the east side of the hills between the Beacon summit and St Ann’s Well, stopped dripping late last year, said hills Conservator Peter Watson.

He said: “I’ve been walking the hills for 30 years and I’ve never known it to dry up before, not even in 1976, when we had a hot dry summer.”

In the last week or so some dripping has resumed.

Elsewhere on the hills, the effects of the water shortage can be seen at Gullet Quarry, which is partly filled with water.

Conservators’ director Ian Rowat said: “The water level is very obviously down by about one-and-a-half metres.

You can see the marks on the rockface where the water level used to be.”

Farmer John Bishop said four ponds at Cummins Farm, which he rents, has dried up. “One of them usually has 10 or 12 feet of water in it,” he said.

“My family has been farming here since 1933 and it’s never been anything like this. One stream through Hope End dried up in April last year and has not run since.

“The dairy farmers have been hit the hardest, because they use an enormous amount of water for washing down, and because the cows drink so much water to produce all that milk.

“But I’m a sheep farmer and we’ve been hit too. I had a couple of fields that I could not use for grazing because the water sources had dried up. The nearest water main is two or three miles away, so we rely on wells, springs and streams.

“We’re on a knife edge.

Even if we had a lot of rain now, it wouldn’t help because most of it would evaporate off, rather than percolate down to the aquifer.”

Oliver Cartwright, regional spokesman for the National Farmers Union, said: “We had much lower than average rainfall last year, which has led to low ground water levels. This means there’s increased pressure on the water resources that are left and farmers are suffering.

The NFU is talking to the Government and Environment Agency about what can be done to safeguard the water supply.”

Although hosepipe bans were announced in parts of the country this week, Severn Trent says it is not predicting any restrictions in the area.