NEWTOWN TOWNSHIP — Sid Elston's shoes are clumped with mud as he explores the inside of a 300-year-old springhouse off Goshen Road.
And he is having a great time.
"Springhouses are a very important part of history, and they're disappearing like mad," he said.
He and his wife, Jan, both of Newtown Square, are active members of the Newtown Square Historical Preservation Society. Their passion is trying to preserve structures, such as this one, that tell volumes about how residents used to live.
The society, which Jan Elston helped found in 1984, sprung from the activities that a group of residents, among them her husband, put together to celebrate the township's tricentennial in 1981. There had been a joint Marple and Newtown historical committee, "but we wanted our own," Sid Elston said. The group now has about 700 members.
Do the two, married since 1955, discuss history a lot at home?
"Constantly," Sid Elston said.
"Well, not really," his wife demurred. "We have lots of other interests, like local politics, and later this morning, we're going to learn how to survey creeks."
Sid Elston, a semiretired insurance broker specializing in malpractice insurance for physicians, said they frequently received phone calls at home asking for historical information.
"I quickly hand the phone to my wife," he said. "I'm not a historian. Jan has a great memory for this stuff."
Pat Tyrrell of Newtown Square, a group member, agreed with his assessment: "She is considered the Newtown Township historian. I get phone calls all the time, and I just tell them, 'Call Jan Elston.' "
The springhouse the Elstons were exploring one recent morning belonged to the William Lewis farm.
"It's unique because it's a combination springhouse, smokehouse and washhouse," Jan Elston said.
The back half of the stone structure served as the springhouse, where food was kept cool before the days of refrigerators. After several days of rain, it is filled with a foot of clear water, steam rising off it on this chilly morning.
In the front room of the building is a whitewashed fireplace that was used to heat water for doing laundry. Smoke was vented to the upstairs room to cure meats.
At one point, electricity was installed in the structure, and a rusty, empty fuse box sits open in the washhouse. The remains of an electric pump lie immersed in the springhouse pool.
