Together with her husband, Margaret

Together with her husband, Margaret runs a well-drilling business, using technology such as drilling rigs and air-compressed hammers. But when it comes to locating water, she needs nothing more than a forked hazel stick. The couple's success rate is higher than 90%. Dowsing - the ability to locate ater, minerals and lost objects underground - is a so-called "sixth sense". There are many theories about how it is done, ranging from the physical, such as magnetism, to the spiritual. One of the most credible is based on the knowledge that everything on this planet vibrates, water more than other matter. It is suggested that dowsers have an acute ability to sense vibrations while standing on the Earth's surface; some dowsers say that they can "sense" water, others that they can smell it, smell being the most acute sense.
For the Wilkins, the drought years of recent times have been busy, with an almost six-week-long waiting list at one stage. Most of Margaret's customers are farmers with wells that have dried up: "We will see customers only once in a lifetime because wells last for a long time." Other customers own remote cottages or barns, now holiday homes, where the expense of running water pipes for great distances is prohibitive. Others are golf-course developers with clubhouse facilities to build.
Margaret tries to locate water between 50 and 70 metres down. "You can't drill a well where there is the slightest risk of farm or other waste getting into the water supply. The water we locate is running in fissures of impervious rock and, as long as we bring the water straight up, it should give a good clean supply, though Cornwall is rich in minerals so you have to watch out for iron."
Another necessity is electricity to drive the pump; this is too expensive to run across miles of fields so ideally the well should be near to existing power supplies.
After considering all this, Margaret can start to look for water. On large areas, such as golf courses, she begins with a map of the area and a pendulum. "I hold the pendulum still and gently move it over the map. It will swing when it is suspended over an area where there is water."
After the map has indicated likely areas, Margaret walks over the fields with a hazel stick, forked and equal in length and width each side. "Once I'm above water, I get a peculiar feeling; I reel slightly. When it subsides I use the stick to locate the exact spot where we should drill." Gripping the two forks of the stick with both hands, she eases them outwards slightly to give tension. "When water is immediately below, the straight part of the stick rises up. It's vital to drill exactly where the stick says. A fraction the wrong way, and you can miss the waterline alltogether. My husband will dowse the same area as me; usually, not always, we agree on teh precise place to drill. If we disagree, we won't drill and will keep looking untill we agree."
Margaret Wilkins is not in isolation, carrying out some curious old tradition down in the west of England. Anthropologists and writers have long been fascinated by the inexplicable intuition. Margaret calls it an "intuitive perception of the environment" and that is the closest we can get to understanding why she locates water so accurately. If she did not have "the sixth sense", how else could the family live off their well-drilling business year after year?