Today we take it for granted that a constant supply of drinkable water is available at the turn of a tap, but rarely stop to consider how it got here or where it came from. In a city like London the challenge of sourcing and delivering water has been key to growth of the metropolis, a centuries-long story that's the subject of this new book by Nick Higham, the former BBC arts and media correspondent. He tells a tale of entrepreneurs and engineers, of greed and skill, and of the evolving infrastructure that eventually delivered a public amenity the capital could be proud of.
It's a fact-thick volume, topping 400 pages before the notes and bibliography kick in, and based on a considerable amount of fresh research. A lot of original documentation has been fished out of the London Metropolitan Archives, particularly company reports, and often referenced in chatty footnotes in case you want to follow in Nick's footsteps and unwrap it yourself. This meticulous fieldwork has been chronologically arranged into 20 thematic chapters, along with observations from numerous site visits, and the end result is a definitive and entertaining labour of love.
If there's an underlying theme it's that water equals money. And yet London's medieval water supply was originally free, a series of conduits delivering a communal feed from nearby streams and springs 'for the profit of the city and the good of the whole realm'. But as London's population grew even sixteen conduits proved insufficient, so in the 1590s a soldier called Edmund Colthurst proposed a super-conduit bringing water from springs near Ware. He identified the route and started the digging, but ultimately it was Hugh Myddelton who took the credit for the New River, and the profits too. The New River Company was one of the first private utility companies and its often dubious machinations thread through much of the remainder of the book.
Several water companies emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries taking water from the Thames or the Lea, initially geographically-based but later competing for customers in adjacent territory. Chelsea's board were somewhat predatory, Bethnal Green's essentially incompetent mafiosi and several others acted together as a price-fixing cartel. The introduction of steam-powered pumpingstations and cast iron pipes triggered further growth, which often saw roads repeatedly dug up when houses changed suppliers. Unregulated competition proved increasingly unpopular so in 1817 the big companies decided to carve up central London between them, only to prove that unregulated monopolies were often worse.
With more and more of London's population connected up the big problem switched from supply to sanitation. Cesspits had previously been local affairs but the spread of WCs meant effluent could now be flushed away and often ended up in the Thames, from which it circulated around the system again. Some water companies therefore shifted their intakes above the tidal limit, whereas others only did that later when legally forced. James Simpson's invention of the filter bed also saved lives, although nobody realised at the time that most of the hard work was being done by a 'slime blanket' of micro-organisms on top of the water rather than the layers of sand, shells and gravel underneath.
It says much for Nick's scholarly approach that the well-known tale of John Snow and the Soho pump-handle doesn't appear until page 237, and the government's final capitulation during The Great Stink until page 278. I learned that Joseph Bazalgette didn't come up with the idea of giant intercepting sewers, he merely inherited the project and made sure they got built, being 'a man of heroic patience' as well as a great engineer. If he'd had his way they'd have been extended another 20 miles downstream, but budgets dictated terminating at Beckton and Crossness rather than Mucking and Higham. Nick chuckles audibly at this point.
The worst machinations of the water companies were eventually halted in 1904 with the creation of the Metropolitan Water Board, although some received over-generous payoffs and some sidestepped the legislation and continued to reap profits. With water finally taken under public control the book skips rapidly ahead, contracting the entire 20th century into a single chapter. Nick has little good to say about Margaret Thatcher's eventual reprivatisation in the 1980s, an echo of the past which confirms that 'left to their own devices shareholders will enrich themselves and let society go hang'. He also muses on how London's water supply might be protected in a warmer future, and ends by making a pilgrimage to the Oak Room at New River Head where the whole caboodle kicked off.
I knew I was in safe hands on page 1 when, in a note on style, Nick says 'I prefer the River Lea to Lee'. I very much enjoyed following the battle of science over ignorance, and appreciated the diligence with which the information on every page had been sourced. I noted that the book is more historical and economic than geographical - a single map at the start has to do some very heavy lifting - so expect to read more about shareholder battles than lost rivers. But it was fascinating to learn how the battle between private companies and consumers has been going on a lot longer than I might have assumed, and to be reminded that two-thirds of London's water supply is still sourced from the Thames. The mercenary river indeed.
