Water, Wells and Waste in Bampton and Weald

An Exhibition by Alistair Wray and Paul Ader

This exhibition looks at how water has shaped the development of Bampton and Weald, bringing opportunities and challenges and then looks in detail at how local families have accessed water and disposed of wastewater and human waste, and the evidence supporting this and finally how communities banded together to obtain improved water supplies, address growing pollution challenges and secure wastewater treatment facilities and how our water and the services it provides must be safeguarded

We hope that you enjoy the exhibition and accompanying book and the insights it brings.

It links to other Bampton Community Archive publications which are referenced. We were going to include a section on flooding challenges too but given the material we have obtained, that is for another time.

Thank you to all who have provided information and agreed to be interviewed for this exhibition and the related publication, in particular to Jo Lewington and Janet Rouse for their long memories and overall guidance.

About the authors:

Alistair Wray

Retired Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a Member of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, with a background of more than 45 years in international development and infrastructure service provision, including water supply and wastewater, in the UK, the EU and over 30 countries worldwide. Alistair has enjoyed collating information for this exhibition and publication on water shaping our local environment and the roll played by wells and privies.

Paul Ader

Paul has over 40 years of experience in accountancy, business analysis, training, change management, and sense-making. From 2007 to 2012, he played a key role in national reforms to the process of certifying the cause of death. Lessons from these reforms led him to adopt a complexity-informed approach to change that starts with the way people make sense of their lived experience. Between 2013 and 2021 he led and mentored use of this approach in 9 countries, including Lebanon, Pakistan, Afghanistan, South Sudan, the UK, and the USA.

At the start of the Covid pandemic, Paul decided to work closer to home. Since then he has had part-time roles with the Community & Wellbeing Team at West Oxfordshire District Council, Active Oxfordshire, and Citizens Advice West Oxfordshire.

Paul has an active and growing interest in local history. He also helped start the Shill Brook Catchment Partnership to inform and activate community engagement on sewage pollution, flooding, and river environment.

Water - a blessing or a curse?

Water Shaping the Local Environment

The development of Bampton and Weald, with its proximity to the Thames flood meadows, was strongly influenced by water and watercourses and the opportunities and risks they bring. Giles, in The History of the Parish and Town of Bampton, 1848, describes all this enthusiastically.

“The climate of Bampton is considered to be remarkably salubrious, owing in great measure, to the gravelly nature of the soil. The water is also excellent, except in situations where it is exposed to contamination from decayed vegetable-matter. Fish abounds, not only in the river, but also in all the brooks; and the fine flavour which they possess, is thought to be a strong proof of the healthiness of the air.

The soil of the northern part of Bampton abounds in clay, which renders the cultivation of the land more difficult and its profits less ample, but the soil of that portion of the district which lies in the plain, is a continued stratum of gravel covered by a thin surface of vegetable mould. It is tolerably fertile and susceptible of a high degree of cultivation, except where it is exposed to the annual inundation from the river.”

Bampton and other nearby villages were in fact built on slightly raised areas of ground to benefit from the surrounding fertile soils but reduce flood risks. The History of the County of Oxford: Volume 13, Bampton Hundred, 1996 provides useful references on how the townships of Bampton and Weald developed and were defined in part by Shill Brook and Highmoor Brook and also by roads south to crossing points over the Thames.

It also mentions the importance of river transport from the early Middle Ages and the possible existence of an artificial watercourse west at the Deanery down to the Great Brook and on to the Thames at Shifford although this had been backfilled by the end of the Middle Ages. Another influence on the development of the town may have been the alignment and importance of holy pilgrimage sites including the Lady Well, the Deanery Chapel (a two story chapel within the present Deanery, St Mary The Virgin Church, which has variously been dedicated to St. Beornwald, St John with St Mary and finally St Mary, and finally to St Andrews Chapel next to the Beam and others. The Lady Well at Ham Court was known for its supposed healing properties in the late 18th century and its probable importance as a religious site much earlier and its association with eye ailments suggests connections with the cult of St. Frideswide.

Bridge Street- July 2007

Mill Green - January 2007

Bampton and it’s watercourses

Mill Green - 1989 Shillbrook 2022

Water and the local economy

The productive farming land and proximity of brooks supported the establishment of mills from an early time. In 1086 4 mills were recorded in the Manor of Bampton Bampton Manor; one was presumably the later corn grist mill to the north of Mill Street (now Bridge Street) which was demolished by 1899. Another was attached to Bampton d’Oilly Manor.

There are various records of the leases and rents charged for these mills over the centuries (see The History, 1996). Oxfordshire Mills by Wilfred Foreman (1983) also makes passing reference to various mills in and around Bampton including by Highmooor Brook, and in Black Bourton (at Mill Farm and still visible,) and lists 14 millers in the Bampton Hundreds in 1280, of which 3 had the name Miller! The names of other houses along Shill Brook recall the existence of past mills, as does Mill Green in Bampton.

Fisheries are also mentioned in old records including one near the Deanery where there were fishponds, and at Ham Court, and also attached to Bampton d’Oilly Manor and presumably Fishers’ Bridge on the Buckland Road takes its name from these activities.

Tanning was probably another important economic activity in Bampton and Weald which benefitted from nearby livestock (skins of sheep and pigs, and hides of cattle,) easy access to water (Shill Brook) and bark from trees (the name Weald means woodland.)

Tanning then was a messy business involving washing off blood, dung and dirt by a stream, removal of flesh and hair and then soaking of the leather in pits containing urine and lime. You can imagine that the pollution and health hazards from this industry were significant.

For more information on tanning and the making of leather goods including gloves in Bampton, please see the excellent Archive publication on The Tanning Industry in Bampton by Miriam James and Jo Lewington. As noted, probably the most compelling evidence of this old industry now exists in names with a disproportionate number of “Tanners” among local inhabitants, and indeed the adoption of the name “Tannery Gardens” for a new housing development.

Crayfish- Memories from John Pullman:

Crayfish are strange private angry creatures - and I will always associate them with summertime in Bampton.

This book and others on mills and their widespread influence on Oxfordshire's development can still be explored and obtained on-line

My parents Anna and David lived on Mill Green for twenty years from 1993, in a cottage surrounded by water. Shill Brook ran along the back of the house, and down the side of the garden. My family visited often and my three young daughters and I soon discovered the stream was full of life. We’d see fish hiding in the shade of the banks as they swam against the current. But crayfish were the highlight. You’d rarely see them in the daytime, but wait for twilight, then shine a torch down into the water and the stream's bed would come alive. The grey/green creatures like small lobster, one claw bigger than the other, would scuttle around, trying to hide from the light. It was easy to scoop them up with a net.

You’d pick them up by the shell to avoid their snapping claws and then drop them in a bucket of stream water. They weren’t big - an inch or two long - but strange enough to scare a child; like tiny prehistoric creatures with mottled shells and many legs. They’d often fight amongst themselves, and if you left them in the bucket overnight, you’d wake up to find several missing. We learned that crayfish are cannibals - especially the North American signal species we found here.

Once or twice we tried cooking them. Catch a bucketful, put them in the freezer for an hour to send them to sleep, then drop them into a pan of boiling water for a few seconds. The shells instantly turned pink. Leave them to cool and peel off the shell to find the meat. It was tasty, but a lot of work for not much reward. Still, it felt special to eat a sandwich made with something you caught in the stream. My girls are adults now, and my parents moved elsewhere in Bampton after being flooded twice. Shill Brook has changed, and when I walk along it these days I never see crayfish.

Ethel Townsend taking bread in. Whitsun 1932

Cooked Cray Fish

A Tanning yard

Mill Farm Black Bourton

Surveying our local wells

Records and a Survey of Our Wells

Information on wells has been obtained via online literature searches, from the Ordinance Survey map published in 1899 and from existing publications in the Bampton Community Archive, and posts on the “Memories of Bampton” website, supplemented by a survey distributed to older properties in the Bampton and Weald area. Conversations with older residents, including members of the Bush Club, have also yielded valuable memories and anecdotes.

A total of around 50 wells were mentioned in response to the survey or in conversations with residents of Bampton. Many wells, while remembered, no longer exist, having been capped, often for safety reasons, or built over due to house extensions and the like.

The survey demonstrates the wide-spread distribution and use of these wells and water pumps in the village and provides a framework for telling some of their stories.

Well Digging

The digging of hand dug wells and their restoration was and still is a skilled but fraught business as WellMasters website explains, and as some of our local well stories illustrate. WellMasters is a small family business that can trace its involvement with hand dug wells back to 1821 and they still dig, reinstate and maintain these wells and hand pumps and associated fittings, and are keen to promote this aspect of our water heritage.

Traditional well digging was a hard and dangerous job but it was relatively well paid; not unsurprisingly as there was a reported death ratio of 2 in 5, but without well diggers people had no water, so demand was high. Wells were ubiquitous but there are no official records of hand dug wells. Nevertheless, whether digging or restoring or cleaning a well you always end up with a cold bum. Near the bottom and often even after just a few metres from the top, water enters the well and trickles down the sides of the well walls. Typically, well linings are open-jointed with the stones or bricks just placed on top of each other, although the top 1-2 m of lining is often mortared to stop surface water run-off from contaminating the well. Some recent 20th century wells have used curved fired bricks but usually they are made from normal rectangular engineering bricks set at an angle on top of each other. With around 272 bricks per meter of well the current cost is about £250/m for the bricks alone. Wells are on average 100cm diameter so inevitably you find that when bending down your bum touches the sides pretty much most of the time, which means a wet and cold bum. This is not exactly a perk of the job! Hence, the well-known expression (?) “It’s Colder than a Well Diggers arse”. Just don’t ask!

Another aspect that is oft forgotten is that wells need cleaning as with age and neglect the flows in and out of the well are reduced, hence well scrubbers were needed. They would come in 5-10 years after the well had been dug and every 10 years after that to clean/scrub the well to ensure that it was safe to drink. After the First Wold War well diggers became less available and well scrubbers were often children (perhaps this was an alternative to cleaning chimneys!), and during the wars, many women became well cleaners because most of the men who had dug or specialised in wells were not around. Later, after WWII mains water started to become much more widely available and the need for this job started to die out.

A well uncovered under what used to be the kitchen of Castle View Farmhouse.

Jo Lewington’s well exterior

Jo Lewington’s well interior

Thatched Cottage hand pump

Tudor Cottage well interior

Tudor Cottage well exterior

Living with Wells

Story of Sam and Adrian Smart’s Well at 1, Primrose Cottages

Sam and Adrian about 30 years ago (early 1990’s) noticed that their lawn showed a circular dead patch near the front of their house and discovered the outline of an old well lining and started to investigate. One thing led to another and following some excavation of the old well shaft and retrieval of all sorts of the usual well debris such as old bottles, china etc they came across some WWII munitions including a hand grenade and various bullet clips. Interesting stuff and they thought, just like I would, why not put this on the mantelpiece! Later on though someone suggested that this should be checked out and the police were called. Huge excitement in a quiet village in the 90’s for our local PC who called the bomb disposal unit and said hand grenade was exploded in an adjacent field. Yes, it was alive! Was this just a Home Guard conscript happily disposing of his WWII obligations down a handy well? Any thoughts? The well now looks good with new lining and frame added to the top. There is another old well linked to this property that used to serve an old livestock building, and in total the four Primrose Cottages shared two wells between them. Adrian recalls that even when piped water supply arrived it consisted just of a single shared standpipe in front of the cottages. There were also two privies at the back shared between two cottages each.

Our house- when I was three, my family moved from Lavender Square to what is now Bushey Row. We moved into one of the first of twelve council houses built; six were in New Road, numbers 1-6, and six in Bushey Row (which was then also called New Road), numbers 7-12. This would have been 1930; we were in number 11. There was a stone sink but no running water. All the water for cooking and drinking had to be carried from a pump over a well, which was situated in front of the middle two houses that was the supply of six houses. We had a very big rain water butt outside, which was used for washing hair and bathing. The water was heated in the copper (in the scullery which had a fire underneath to heat the water), then in came the old tin bath and we all had to go through. This happened once a week, but I can assure you we weren’t dirty. Mum made sure of that; we got washed down every night before going to bed.

There was only one lavatory down the garden. When I was three, I would go with my gran when she had to go, and sit in the corner on a three –legged milking stool. Granny wore combinations, which was a long sleeved vest and long johns, an all-in-one under garment. It had a flap at the back that buttoned at the waist and she used to take this down to do her “business”. Shop bought lavatory paper in those days was little square sheets of paper, sort of slippery, not soft, with the trade name Izal. But most people improvised by tearing newspaper into squares and making a pad of them, which would then have a hole pierced in one corner, and a piece of string passed through and tied in a loop and then hung on a nail on the wall

As sewerage did not come to Bampton until the 1950’s, it was all bucket lavatories, which had to be emptied every week. The buckets were stood at the side of the road on Wednesdays, and the man who did this was Horace Morse. He came around with his horse, pulling a round tank on wheels into which he emptied the buckets, and then this was spread on the farmers’ fields. He also collected the ashes and rubbish in a high-sided square cart on a Thursday, and he emptied all this along the sides of Gog Lane. My brother used to like to go with Horace on the cart, because he loved animals and to be able to help with the horse was just what he liked. One day he was late getting home and Mum was quite worried. She said “where on earth have you been till this time?” His answer was “Up in ‘orace’s ‘orse’s bedroom”, which was the loft above the stable. The horse was stabled at the Old Forge. It is used as a garage now, and the double doors are still there.

Don

time

This brings me on to a really lovely subject. The home copper. Monday was Wash Day. And then Wednesday or thereabouts the copper would be used to boil up all the scraps, vegetable peelings and cabbage stems and all the rest of it for the pigs and chickens. Then on Saturday you hoped that mum had cleaned the copper out properly, because it was bath day whether you needed it or not. Dad set the copper going again. And I remember to this day there was three of us in the bath, my elder brother and myself and my sister in the tin bath in front of the fire - when we had washed and needed to rinse off the water had got very chilled so dad filled a tall white enamel jug from the copper and poured nice hot water pour over our heads. I can feel it to this day.

Lovely!

Tom Tanner remembers being put in the bath directly after his mum finished the wash because the copper was emptied into the bathtub while it was warm. So Don, what do you recall about those suds? “It didn't matter because the clothes were scrubbed with Lifebuoy Soap and so were you”.

Excavation

Exploding the WWII ordinance

A case for the emergency services

Well interior and exterior

Gran bathing Frank Hudson back of Castle View

Madeline Read and water pump

Madeline Read and cousin in the bath tub

The Bampton Archive Publication; The Way It Was, by Freda Bradley; published Bampton, 2001, provides a wonderful starting point from not so many years ago!

Rouse’s story about bath

Restoring and using wells today

Well Construction

The wells in Bampton and Weald were typically hand dug in the upper layer of sand and gravel deposits to access the shallow sweet groundwater in the upper aquifer, typically just 10-15 ft (3-5 m) below the surface, and were lined with stones for stability. Below this is a thick layer of impermeable Oxford Clay which for practical purposes limited the depth of wells. There is some evidence that underground streams flow at this interface and some wells tapped into these streams. Deeper still, below the clay, there are layers of hard rock and shale where water is again encountered.

Building these shallow hand-dug wells was often a mix of technical skills and risk management. Typically, a wooden frame of hard wood, such as oak, was placed on the ground and 2 or 3 layers of stones placed on top, and the earth dug out from under the wooden frame which sinks under the weight. Further layers of stone were then added and more earth dug away, and the well progressively deepened until water was encountered.

Jo Lewington’s well at Sandford Cottage:

The shaft of the well was built with stones and the top above ground was built up with large flag stones. My well is about 15 ft deep maximum. When I repaired my well last summer I dug down until I came to the original wooden frame – still intact. It has only a couple of feet of water in it, but I have never known it to go dry. It was used by the inhabitants of Sandford Cottage until water came in 'mains' in the 1950s. The water was pulled up by buckets attached by a sort of dog-lead-clip attached to the end of a pole. Mrs Whitlock (next-door) could be heard collecting 2 buckets full at 6 in the morning and another 2 buckets at the end of the day. She said it was known to be “the best water in Bampton”. It was tested annuaIly for free by the local authorities (quite different to nowadays when we have to pay to ensure our water is fit to drink). I remember there were always tiny black flatworms on the inside of the buckets which came up with the water. They didn't bother us. We did no filtering or boiling. I do not remember if Mrs Whitlock collected more on washing days but both Sandford Cottage and Brook Cottage next door have steps going down to the brook, which I have always assumed were for us to do our washing. My well was in use in 1952 when my mother bought my cottage. It needed clearing out in 1989 when I came back, because it had not been used for the 30+ years that I had been away. It was fairly silted up and some of the upright flags around the top had collapsed. On 2 occasions, dogs have fallen in and had to be rescued. The first time, I went down the well with a ladder and pushed the dog up from underneath (no harm done). On the second occasion, with a hysterical owner at the top, and me being older, I had to call in a chap from Sandford Field and send him down – again no harm done. Now I have restored, de-silted, and built up the well for the second time. I have replaced the large flagstones around the top and I don't think anything could fall in.

Nigel and Jane Wallis’ Well at Castle Mews

Nigel’s interest in wells was stimulated by seeing a pamphlet on “Building a Well Safely” from the Centre of Alternative Technology, Machynlleth near Aberystwyth. Knowing that the water table is quite high locally he had to try it out. Also, Nigel’s grandfather was a dowser and so Nigel had grown up seeing this skill being used, and he did use dowsing (a pendulum in this case) for this job to check on the best site although as Jane observes one does not really need to be a dowser to find a good well site in Bampton. Jane is also interested in the spiritual and healing aspects of dowsing.

So these interests run in the family. They built their first well at Castle Mews; the well is still there and the new owners continue to use it.

They found that the gravel layer starts 2-3ft down and water table is at 5-6ft depth. A wooden ring was initially laid at the bottom of a shallow dug circular hole (any wood is suitable for this type of construction). Then the first few layers of bricks are placed on top of the ring, mortared and allowed to set. The ground underneath is then excavated and the mortared ring sinks. This technique provides protection for the digger. Quite a few fossils were encountered during the excavation. Mortared engineering bricks were used in the construction right from the base to the top, hence the well walls are effectively waterproof, and the water enters from the bottom of the well. Once the well reaches the required depth, it is capped and a manhole cover inserted, for future access. The hand pump, which is lift or suction design, was offset from the well. Waders are also clearly an essential part of the modern well digger’s kit!

This is a good example of more modern well digging. This new well is in the garden of Westbrook House. It was drilled in December 2020 and the installation completed in April 2021, and it is now used for garden irrigation. It was sunk using simple percussion drilling technique and a cutting tool. The borehole depth drilled is 5.5m and is capped by a manhole cover. The suction tube is inserted into the borehole and connected to an off-set electric pump draws the water to a tank. Irrigation controls control pumping and ensure that the garden is irrigated as and when required and automatically cuts off when rain is detected thus saving electricity and manage the use of water. Rather different to the traditional open wells of days past!

This well was found several years ago, after doing some landscaping work. It is flask-shaped, which is apparently quite common, with dry stone wall construction, so that water seeps in from the sides as well as appearing at the bottom. It was dug out manually a further 1.5 metres or so by a rather eccentric company that specialises in this sort of thing - https://www.wellmasters.co.uk. The well to now used to water the garden.

This well is about 4m deep and now has a glass cover and light, and is fitted with an electric pump to fill a tank for garden irrigation. The old hand pump is still attached to the adjacent garden wall. The role of underground streams and a possible intriguing link is that when the Deanery used their well to fill their pond a while back it caused the Cobb House well to run dry which was a first in memory, so perhaps these wells are inter-connected via an underground stream?

Westbrook House Well

The well at Cobb House

Cobb House Well - Cover, Interior and Hand Pump

Well drilling, storage tank and control box

Well excavation

The finished well and hand pump in action

Privies and night soil collection

Shaping Lives - Wells and Privies

Water is essential for all life and how we have accessed safe drinking water, and indeed the safe disposal of our waste, has crucially shaped lives in the past. Collecting safe water was time consuming (and still is in many parts of the world) but the use of simple hand-dug wells transformed lives in Bampton over past centuries and for many their use continued to shape the daily pattern of family life here up until the 1950’s. Well water would have been drawn up by hand in buckets or large water bags and later using hand pumps, of which examples can still be seen.

Our survey also identified a number of privies. What in fact is a privy? Its definition is of a toilet located typically in a small shed outside a house (and also implies something secret or secluded!). By their nature, many have not survived but there are still a few great examples locally!

As the volumes of water obtained from using wells was limited, this meant that a separate method of disposing and collecting human waste was required.

The night soil collection service provided by Horace Morse continued into the 1950’s although with the provision of piped water supply in 1906 and water supply improvements in subsequent years, an increasing number of houses abandoned their privies and started using flush toilets and constructed septic tanks and soakaways for the treatment of wastewater. However, Horace and his large dray horse, Snowball, remained familiar sights in the village collecting night soil from the remaining houses on a weekly basis.

The auction catalogue for the Benfield Estate of 22 September 1982 provides further evidence of the continuing existence of outside WCs (privies) in many properties in Bampton in the 20th century through its descriptions and the lot diagrams, and this includes 2-4 Windsor Cottages, Broad Street; 1 and 2 Belgrave Cottages and 1,2,4 and 5 Bourton Cottages, all in Church Street.

A similar arrangement also served 1-4 Albion Place cottages on Bridge Street, adjacent to Cheyne Lane, where there is a line of well-preserved privies, which are also listed, at the back of their gardens and can be accessed from a doorway in Cheyne Lane, including one that retains the original toilet seat structure. These cottages most likely also had a shared well located in the back gardens.

David was born October, 1943 at 4 Windsor Cottages, Broad Street and recalls the water supply for all 5 cottages was provided by a shared well behind numbers 3 or 4, which had a hand pump on top. This was no longer used once piped water supply became available and was later capped and covered over due to recent house extensions. David remembers how in cold weather the pump used to freeze up and his mother used to heat a kettle to unfreeze it. And also how people nearby already on mains water used to have to collect water from the well when their supply failed. Many households only connected up to mains water when the sewer network was installed.

All five Windsor cottages had a privy in their rear gardens. These were some distance from the well given the length of these gardens. This row of privy structures fortunately still exists as they are listed although they now serve different uses. The adjacent Victoria Cottages had a similar servicing set up with a shared well and a line of privies at the rear of their gardens (which are visible on GoogleMaps). Windsor cottages were built and owned by the Benfield family, which might account for them having similar servicing arrangements.

David recalls that night soil was collected once per week by Horace Morse and his horse, a large dray called Snowball, and a cart. It was taken to Gog Lane, just off the Aston Road and spread on fields there, which accounted for some sizable vegetables. Horace used to live nearby in Rose Cottage, between Windsor and Victoria Cottages. There are many stories about Horace and his cart.

David also remembers that in those days there were allotments at Calais Dene and there were many open wells in these allotments (also recalled by Tom Tanner).

So Horace was a little chap with a bit of a squeaky voice. I'm pretty sure he collected buckets on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and ash on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He had two different types of vehicles, but the same horse. Right. So he was going around with his horse with this two-wheel tanker for the buckets. The tanker was almost the width of the road. You could tell who was of the plusher fraternity and who was of the poor fraternity because when the rich people put their buckets out to be collected they would sprinkle the contents with ashes to stop the smell. But the poor people would just put the News of the World over the top because was a rather large newspaper. The buckets were slightly oval in shape and capable of holding perhaps 5 gallons. Don also recounts the story of Horace’s jacket in his own words:

In those days, we would go home to lunch.

My Dad had one these baby Fordson tractors with a big long tank and a radiator and when we went home for lunch after hoeing or digging potatoes in the fields about 6 of us boys would sit on the tank like riding a horse - our feet on the wide mud guards. We went from Gog Lane up to New Road where we all lived, had lunch and went back to fields. We had just pulled into the gateway to Gog Lane and there was Horace and he had his arm up to his elbow in muck. Dad said to him, "Horace, what on earth are you doing?" Horace said "My blinkin’ jacket's fell in here". Dad replied: "Don't worry, Horace, I'm about your size, I've got a spare one you can have". "Ah", Horace says, "it ain't that, it’s that my sandwiches are in the pocket".

David Rose; Wells and Privies at Windsor Cottages:

Horace Morse -collected night soil on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and ashes on Tuesday and Thursday

Weald Manor - Night soil door in wall in Weald Street

Windsor Cottages privies

Privie detail

Don Rouse recalls Horse Morse and his horse

Legends and Stories

The Lady Well

There is a reputed local holy well known as “The Lady Well” located at Ham Court and its location is shown on the 1899 Ordinance Survey map . Sadly, although this well seems to have been restored in the mid-19th century, it was later covered again following landscaping work in the 1970’s when excavation waste apparently buried the well. Location aside, there are various stories associated with this well that we should summarise.

It was also called St Frideswide’s Well after the saint who was said to have escaped a proposed marriage by sailing or rowing up the Thames and hiding in Ham Court, and its waters were said to be a cure for eye infections that was linked to the cult of St Frideswide, who according to twelfth century legend, cured a blind girl of Bampton.

Was there a Village Well?

Several people have asked whether there was a village well, perhaps in the Market Square, and this might have been expected perhaps in a village the size of Bampton, but no evidence exists. There is a depression in front of Thornbury Flats that suggests there might have been a well there but this is more likely settlement from where the old garage tanks were located. J.L. Hughes-Owen (2005) in his “The Bampton We Have Lost” publication does provide some insights into why a village well was never built.

The Battle of the Well, paraphrased from J.L. Hughes-Owen’s “The Bampton We Have Lost”

For long the Chief Fire Officer of Bampton Fire Brigade, had lobbied the Parish Council for an adequate water supply in the Market Square. It was in the days before Bampton had a mains supply and he warned the Council of the risk of a serious fire in the Square, and the Council in 1901 finally decided that a well should be sunk in the ground to the east of the Town Hall, and the Clerk was instructed to obtain tenders for the work. General approval of the scheme was expressed locally. However, soon there were whispers that a certain influential resident, Squire Southby of Bampton House, who resented not being consulted about the well, had decided to oppose the scheme and organised a petition against it. The Council decided to defy the Squire, and still go ahead, but as a matter of courtesy, informed Witney Rural District Council of the project. Not to be beaten, Southby was busy behind the scenes and persuaded the Rural District Councillors to oppose the scheme and claim the power to veto the well. Eventually the Parish Council caved in and opted to drop the project although for a while there remained some bitter feelings locally.

The Parish Council minutes of February 1902 provide some fascinating insights into how contentious this issue was but in the end the idea was dropped.

Spotting Old Wells

If you are observant when going around Bampton and Weald, a number of circular walled flower beds can be spotted in gardens around the village which would have been old well structures (Bushy House, Chantry House and Well House for example), and Spring Cottages in Primrose Lane which had a now-buried shared well at the front, but had another well still visible in the rear garden as a raised circular flower bed. These glimpses supported by other survey information we have gathered.

The larger houses and farms relied on very similar systems for their water and waste disposal, while often having multiple wells. Weald Manor offers a useful comparison.

Wells at Weald Manor

From conversations with Rosemary and Michael Pelham, and Sylvia Nicholson: There were at least two wells at this property, one in the kitchen and another in the orchard but probably others.

Sylvia who lived in the Lodge to Weald Manor worked at the Manor for 30-40 years, initially as a nanny for Major and Rosemary Colevile and then returning later, after a spell spent working for Witney Blankets, as a cook for Rosemary and Michael Pelham. Sylvia recalls the well near the kitchen where the kitchen maids used to pump the water up from the well into a tank that fed the boiler which also provided water for kitchen use. In those days there were 6-7 staff at the house (4 in kitchen and house and 3 outside). She thought the Manor was served by the sewer network for a while before being connected to the piped water mains because of the wells. She also recalls the night soil collection system and there is still a small doorway in the wall along Weald Street where the buckets of night soil were collected by the ubiquitous Horace Morse.

Rosemary also recalls these wells and the well in the orchard which still exists and is stone-lined with a wire mesh cover over it for safety. There is a story that a tractor driven by Christopher Collett once went into this well when it was more a farmyard. The previous Manor gardener, Francis Shergold, used to look after this well and the gardens. There is some evidence of other wells in the gardens and stable area. Rosemary and Michael also explained how water shaped the past and current layout of Weald Manor - storm drains collected rainwater from either side of the house and channelled it under the road (Bridge Street) and into the Ham Court drainage ditches (this was once a ford across the road). To the south corner of the property, there is an old 19th century lake which is fed by springs to this day. On the opposite side of the estate by Weald Street there is a water retention pond for managing runoff from Weald and for controlling a steady discharge under the road and into Shill Brook. It is fascinating how water and its management have shaped the development of this property.

Weald Manor lake fed by springs

Night Soil collection - door in the wall in Weald Street

Weald Manor well in the orchard

OS map showing Lady Well location

The story of the Allotment well construction

The Well at the Allotments on Bridge Street

When a well was suggested for the allotments on Bridge Street, the same construction technique was proposed as for the well as was successfully used for the recent well at 2 Castle Mews. First, a circle of wood was laid on the ground to mark the size of the well and where it was to be situated. Then, the initial part of the ‘hole’ was dug out without the wood circle in position, and once it got to a depth where it would have been unsafe to continue without supports to stop the earth falling in on the digger, the wood circle was placed into the hole and the brickwork placed on top. Plenty of debris was encountered during the initial excavation of this well, certainly in the first three feet, as it was probably the site of an old midden, and also included excavated material from the adjacent brook.

A few courses of mortared bricks were built on the wooden circle and then it was undermined to allow it to sink down further and then the whole process repeated once the mortar had hardened in the first courses - it was then repeated again and again until it got to the desired depth. As the digging goes on, the diggers have to descend to the bottom of the well and the last digging was done in very wet conditions, especially as here the well is adjacent to Shill Brook and is about the same depth as the bed of the brook. A small pump had to be used to remove the water in the well during the last stages of work. Mortared engineering bricks were used here as at 2 Castle Mews, and an offset suction hand pump was installed.

First stage of excavation

Debris from initial well excavation

Wood ring template used to support brickwork

Tripod and pulley for deeper excavation Nigel excavating the well using pulley and bucket

Excavation team - Nigel, Dennis and Jo

Engineering bricks lining the well

Nigel mortaring top courses of brickwork

Capping the well and installing access manhole

Capping well and access manhole

Installing hand pump

The Grand Opening

Completion and Maintenance

The well was completed in May 2015. In total, Nigel Wallis estimates that the well cost around £1,000, covering the cost of engineering bricks and mortar, and the pump purchase. A simple water testing kit was used at the end to check the quality of the water obtained and it was good.

The work was undertaken and shared between all those with an allotment on Bridge Street. “It was a very gratifying job, and everyone seemed to enjoy it and had a sense of achievement when the well was finished and the hand pump attached. The well always has a plentiful supply, even in long periods of dry weather and of course is free.”

However, this spring 2024, the allotment holders had to rally around again to arrange for the repair of the pump as priming no longer worked, and a new valve needed to be installed. This was quite a challenge but the pump now works again and the sense of team work continues.

The Allotment Well Completion and Maintenance

Offset pump base and suction pipe Offset pump base and drainage pipe

Installing hand pump Johnathan & Nigel fixing handle on pump Jo pumping first water

It seems to work The Grand Opening Children helping carry buckets of water - a holiday highlight

Maintainance exposing pump base Pump upside down waiting for new gasket John Hyde fitting new gasket

Bampton – A healthy place to live. True or false?

The Witney Gazette reported on 6th June 1891 that Bampton was known, locally, as a very healthy place to live with many people living long lives. This reputation was attributed to the gravelly nature of the soil and the excellent quality of the water.

While the article may be exaggerated to contrast the rural idyll of Bampton with the urban problems of Witney, it is not clear that the quality of the water was as good as it was claimed to be.

Janet and Jean Elward swimming at Sandy Beach on the Thames 1950

Combating cholera leads to more pollution

From cholera to public health and sanitation

Cholera Morbus arrived in the UK in 1831 and, over a 2-year period, killed 31,000 people. It then returned in 1848, 1854 and 1866.

The cholera epidemics happened during a period in which large numbers of people were moving to cities to take advantage of jobs created by the industrial revolution. This change increased the number of urban poor who lived in small, cold, damp homes often infested with lice and vermin in areas where there was little or no attempt to empty cess pits or remove putrefying carcasses or other waste.

At the start of the 1800s every house would have a cess pit or share one with their neighbours. These were brick chambers, perhaps 6 feet deep and about 4 feet wide. Where possible they were located in the back garden away from the house, but in the centre of cities and in other crowded areas it was more common to have a cess pit in the basement under the household or in shared spaces between houses. Cess pits were often purposely made porous so that the liquid content slowly seeped away and capacity for solid waste was maximised. Even so, they needed to be emptied occasionally and this unenviable task was left to so-called ‘night soil men’ or ‘nightmen’.

Cess pits worked reasonably well until the introduction of piped and pumped water supply and the consequent uptake of water closets – particularly amongst what were referred to as the middle class –from the 1850s onwards. When these water closets were flushed they created surges of waste and increased the level of water making the cess pits overflow. This made the cess pits smell more and, because medical theory at the time held that diseases were caused by “miasma”, the airborne transmission of poisonousness, people thought that they were at increased risk of catching cholera or typhoid.

This is where Edwin Chadwick comes into the story. Edwin was a lawyer, social activist and an advocate of utilitarianism – a philosophy which encouraged actions that ensured the greatest good for the greatest number.

In 1832,Edwin Chadwick was appointed secretary to a royal commission that was formed to investigate the effectiveness of the existing Poor Laws and, through this, he started to investigate the economic and health impact of poor sanitation within cities.

Edwin Chadwick’s Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain published in 1842 led to introduction of the Nuisance Removal and Diseases Prevention Act in 1846, a number of subsequent Public Health Acts and, in 1866, a Thames Conservancy Act that banned the new flow of untreated sewage into the Thames. Since this was before the introduction of regular municipal collection of night soil, people had to dig and use more cess pits increasing the risk of contaminated well water. Contamination caused by seepage from cess pits would have been a particular problem in Bampton because of the porous nature of the gravelly soil and the high-level of the local water table. As such, in seeking to address one problem, rivers full of sewage, the Thames Conservancy Act, created or increased another problem, contaminated well water.

Scarlet Fever Epidemic Forgotten in Disputes Over Water Quality

The Streptococcus pyogenes (Group A Streptococcus) bacterium that we now know causes Scarlet Fever and a number of other illnesses can be waterborne and result from pollution. As such, it seems possible that the epidemic of scarlet fever in 1902 which affected 46 children (out of perhaps a total of 450 children in Bampton) may have been started by polluted water. It seems strange then that the newspaper articles published only 2-3 years later show disagreement on the medical officer’s view that water in many of the wells in Bampton was contaminated. Perhaps the issue was that if the water did not look, taste or smell polluted, then it was taken to be clean.

These articles point the way to the next part of the story: the work of the Bampton Water and Gas Company to dig wells and lay pipes to provide clean water to the whole area; even though, as we will see, many people were unable or unwilling to move to piped supply.

The newspaper articles here, published in Dcember 1904 and November 1905 refer to issues with the quality of water in wells in Bampton and to samples of the water being sent away for analysis.

18th July 1902

Witney Gazette

Witney Gazette 24th December 1904

Witney Gazette 25th November 1905

Municipal Wells & Mains Water

The Bampton District Water and Gas Company wrote to the Witney Rural District Council in December 1904 requesting permission to open the roads in Bampton and Aston to lay pipes to supply both water and gas. This permission was granted in advance of digging a well on land to the south of the Aston Road circled on the map below and shown as the location of the “Witney R.D.C Water Works” Water Tower.

The water company’s borehole on this site was sunk to 308 feet through 14½ foot of topsoil, sand and gravel, 137½ feet of clay and then 156 feet of forest marble and other hard rock. After all this work, the borehole had to be abandoned because the water found at the bottom was saline and undrinkable.

The company’s management team must have been quite desperate at this point because they had already started to purchase and layout the gas and water pipes they were going to install.

Fortunately, the company was able to find an alternative source of water. This was in a field on Station Road in Lew about one and half miles outside Bampton. The well and pumping station were situated alongside the Highmoor Brook on an acre of freehold land purchased from a Mr T. Cripps of Aston.

The 1st well site, early 1905

The 2nd well site, early 1906

As shown here, this new source of water was described in the Witney Gazette in glowing terms – however, it is possible that this was intended to encourage people to consider signing-up to use the water. More of which, later.

We think that the water and gas pipes were laid in the central part of the village during 1905 and that, the additional pipes required to bring the water from the new well, were laid from August 1906.

While the newspaper article refers to the well as 100-foot deep, other sources say that it was, in fact, a sump well with a diameter of 8 feet and a depth of 26 feet and was fed from an adjacent borehole that had been sunk through rock to a depth of 125 feet.

The water was pumped from the well at a rate of 6,000 gallons per hour.

1.7 miles to Bampton

Digging an additional well in 1915. Photo given to Joy Lovejoy’s father.

Local Wells and Water Pumps in 1899

Wells and pumps circled in red are those that have been identified in the local survey [as listed on one of the other boards] Some of these were created after 1897 (and have therefore been added to the map).

Those circled in Blue have not yet been identified by anyone and, if any visitors, recognise them, they are welcome to leave a note for us.

The Ordnance Survey used a “W” for a well and a “P” for a water pump, but it is not clear if some of the water pumps were installed on top of pre-existing wells rather than on bore holes dug for the purpose.

OS 25-inch Pre-War Map

Oxfordshire

37-07 (28037072)

37-06 (28037062)

37-10 (28037102) with wells highlighted

Private supplier rescued by the public sector

At its grand opening in March 1907, The Bampton Gas & Water Company’s offered to ‘lay on services’ free for the first 100 customers and install 6 fire hydrants and to supply water for use by the Fire Service without any charge. We suspect that the offer was just for free installation of pipes to customer’s property rather than free water.

All in all, the water works took two years to complete and cost several thousand pounds. If this was £2,500, the equivalent today would be £250,000.

Having got off to what appears to have been a flying start, a comment in 1908 (copied opposite), a flurry of comments in 1912-13 and detailed reporting of a public inquiry in February 1913 suggests that things were actually somewhat murky.

While we do not know how many customers stopped taking water, a few years later, the Bampton and District Gas and Water Company went into liquidation and was purchased (or perhaps ‘bailed out’) by the Bampton Parish Council using a loan of £866 from the Rural District Council. The interest on this loan was financed by the addition of a Special Rate.

Imposition of this additional cost created a number of protests (one of which is included below); this sound similar to the debates today about rates charged by Thames Water and the bailing out of private sector companies

The end of locally sourced mains water for Bampton 1934-35

Report in the Witney Gazette - 1934 on a discussion at the Bampton Parish Council

Witney Gazette 11th April 1908

Sewers, Nuisances and Sanitary Conditions

Sewers

Sewers date back to 3,500 BCE and, later, were used in a very advanced way by the Romans; these were primarily intended to act as storm drains taking surface water from urban areas and rural towns and villages to the nearest stream or river. However, human waste, animal waste (e.g. from horses used for transport) and waste products from industry were left in the streets to be ‘cleaned’ by storms, these drained with the surface water into the rivers. While the dreadful state of the rivers was widely recognised in the past, as it is again today, it took the arrival of Cholera Morbus in 1831 for action to be taken.

Liverpool City Council led the way with the installation of a sewerage system starting in 1848 and finishing in 1859, this doubled life expectancy. However, in other places the legislation, on its own, was not enough. In London, it took foul smells, popularly known at the time as “The Great Stink” from the Thames River flowing past the Houses of Parliament to persuade MPs to act.

In 1859, a year after the Great Stink, engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette designed and managed the installation of two enormous sewers alongside the Thames, diverting the sewage downstream to outlets in the Thames Estuary. This work, most of which was completed in less than 10 years, was copied in many other cities and then spread to rural towns including Witney where they arrived in 1874. Bampton, as a small rural village, had to wait over 80 years until the 1950s.

Nuisance Inspectors & Local Bye Laws

The Nuisance Removal and Diseases Prevention Act in 1846 led to the appointment of quaintly named Inspectors of Nuisances who, according to one description, were “tasked with prowling poor neighbourhoods and stamping out insanitary habits”.The cartoon shown on the timeline display board gives a comedic view of a group of these inspectors at work

This short article from the Witney Gazette provides a local example of a problem that would have been investigated by a Nuisance Inspector

This Act and subsequent Public Health legislation gave Local Boards of Health (Sanitary Authorities from 1875 and District Councils from 1894) the power to deal with:

• dwelling houses or buildings that were so filthy and un wholesome as to be injurious

to health

• any foul or offensive ditch, gutter, privy, cesspool or ashpit

• the keeping of animals, including pigs and cows, in a way that could endanger health

• accumulations of dung, manure, offal, filth or refuse.

The cover page of these Bye Laws is shown here and pages 5-8 are available to read as part of the Exhibition

We have also found a summary report written by in 1877 by Gilbert Child, the Health Officer for the combined District of Oxfordshire. This outspoken report argues that the Public Health Act 1872 had caused, and will continue to cause, sanitary administration “to fail to obtain for the people of this country the three primary requirements of healthy existence, viz. good water-supply, good drainage, and wholesome houses, and that it has equally failed to put any appreciable check upon the spread of epidemic disease.” He goes on to say, later, that after three years' trial of the Act of 1872 “it has been found wanting in every particular requirement of sanitary legislation beyond that of the mere removal or abatement of the commonest nuisances, and even in this respect its imperfection has been frequently demonstrated.” These are important points because it was this Act that first put a duty on [local] “Authorities to provide clean water, dispose of all sewage and refuse, and ensure that only safe food was sold. It [also] gave them the power to ensure that homes were connected to the main sewerage system. The Act forbade the building of new homes without such connection.”

Pages 17-20 of this report covering the points mentioned above and pages 41-45 providing details for the Witney Rural District are attached as an annex.

Copies of this report are available to browse through as part of the Exhibition.

From Horace and his horse to mains sewerage

From the 1860s onwards new sewerage systems in large towns piped piped waste to agricultural areas, referred to as sewerage ‘farms’, where the manurial value of sewerage could be utilised. This process was referred to as Land Treatment and continued in some areas until the 1980s when it was fully replaced by chemical treatment.

In Bampton, Horace Morse used Land Treatment for the night soil he collected and, for perhaps 7-8 years in the 1950s, had an arrangement with Reg Rouse to tip the sewerage on Reg’s fields off Gog Lane. Don Rouse remembers that this arrangement had an interesting consequence.

Don’s story about Horace and the tomatoes

Horace needed somewhere to allow his horse to graze in the Summer. So my dad come up with a good idea. He went to Horace in April for six to seven years and said, "Horace I want every load of your golden syrup that you can let me have and I'll let you keep your horse in my field". Horace said he liked this idea and every year Reg would tell Horace which field he could empty the stuff in - and most of our land in those days was down Gog Lane. So all Bampton's sewage was going in these fields and it had to be ploughed in. That's when dad told me I could learn to plough. Horace just tipped everything and didn't level it so the tractor would skid and the stuff would go everywhere. It was certainly a shitty job. Now dad would use that field to grow his potatoes and root crops and the next year Horace would be asked to use another field so we could change where things were grown. What people in Bampton did not seem to realise is that tomato seeds are very resilient and that tomatoes are same family as potatoes. So when we harvested the potatoes tomatoes would grow from the manure. Dad has us harvesting the tomatoes and selling them in the greengrocers in Bampton. But after eight years, I am sure that the same tomatoes had been in and out of the system more than once.

The arrival of mains sewerage in Bampton

Mains sewerage was finally installed in Bampton in 1959 after a campaign led by Marjorie Pollard who lived at the Deanery until 1982. Marjorie was a force to be reckoned with and, as shown in the following excerpt from the Oxford Mail in November 1954 was proposing to take direct action unless the sewerage installation went ahead. A later article added that when Horace Morse died in the late 1950s there was no alternative to going ahead with the mains drainage.

While we have not found any photographs of the sewers being put in, Don Rouse described what he remembers happening through the following story he told about Major Colville’s mother.

It was 1959 and mains drainage was being laid. So all the streets were pulled up and there are trenches all over. So Bampton is in a mess. All these Irishmen were digging the roads up, traffic lights everywhere. It was madness. So right outside what is now the Coop, there were traffic lights because there were pipes coming this way and pipes going that way. And Mrs. Colville stopped her car and turned the engine off. So the lights change. So she tries to start her car and it wouldn't start. So she's got the traffic up behind her. And there's a young lad being a bit irritated about it blowing his horn So Mrs Colville finally gets out of her car. She closes the door walks down and taps on the lad's window and says "Excuse me, my man". He says "Yeah, what do you want?" and she says "If you go and start my car, I'll blow your horn".

Map of Sewerage System in Bampton provided by Thames Water in Jul 2023 Red lines have been overdrawn to make them visible on the map. The original map shows them as thin red dtted lines which are identified on the key as Foul Sewers rather than Combined Sewers

The sewerage systems that were installed in the UK in the 1800s and were ‘combined sewers’ that took both surface water and wastewater. From the mid-1900s new sewerage systems included separate sanitary (or foul) sewers so that wastewater would not be mixed with surface water. The map of the sewerage system put in Bampton in 1959 and extended as the village grew (included below) shows the use of separate foul sewers. However, this separation may not be effective because drains on old(er) properties may still channel rainwater into the same pipes as wastewater.

Horace Morse. with his horse

Visit to Bampton Sewage Treatment Works

The Bampton Sewage Treatment Works (STW) on the Buckland Road were built and opened in 1958-59 at the same time as the sewerage pipes were laid. The first manager of the STW was Mr P. J. Bellinger.

The STW started with two or three gravel filtration beds that were designed to give full treatment to sewage from 2,080 people at a dry weather flow of 520,000 gallons per day and also cope with light surface flooding.

While the Thames Conservancy had apparently carried out work to greatly reduce flooding in Bampton, residents in the Buckland and Aston Road still experienced a flow back of sewage from their drains after heavy rain. This was at the root of significant concern about plans for the STW to include sewage from Aston and Cote, which would likely make the existing problem even worse.

The gravel filtration beds were used for about 50 years and then in the early 2000s were replaced with a large aeration tank in which bacteria are used to break down the waste.

All the waste that has not been broken up are screened out and lifted by a wheel with paddles. These are pushed up and out, cleaned and deposited in a skip to be taken to a landfill.

The screened water passing through, with a level-controlled gate. When the flow is too high, the extra water goes over the lip on the left and into a trough from which it empties into the overflow tank.

The second part of the process. The screened sewage is then pumped to the aeration tank where naturally occurring bacteria break down the waste into carbon dioxide, water, organic matter and also convert ammonia into nitrates. At the same time, the bacteria replicate and grow.

The third part of the process, The treated water from the aeration tank is pumped into this settlement tank which separates the treated effluent from the remaining sludge.

The sludge is removed, treated further and stored before being shipped by tanker once or twice a week for more processing at another site.

is an aerobic process that needs oxygen to work – and requires air to be pumped in. The waste remains in the aeration tank for at least 8 hours. And, finally, out

The first manager of the STW was Mr P. J. Bellinger

The first part of the process

Wastewater arriving from the pumping stations. “The things you might expect to see have been broken up”

These are the screenings removed from the water. They are mostly wet wipes and plastic.

Effluent is tested before it leaves the STW

This

into the Shill Brook.

Consolidation

Post War: 1,000+ local water & sewage companies. Most run by local government –as in West Oxfordshire.

1948: River Boards established to control pollution and introduced Discharge Permits in 1951. These were based on standards set in 1908 that sewage effluents should absorb not more than 20mg/l Bio-chemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) and could have suspended solids of 30mg/l BOD.

Separate organisations led to poor co-ordination across river basins particularly during drought & floods following growth in the economy in 1950s and increased demand for water.

1963: River Boards replaced with 27 River Authorities tasked with conserving water in a specified river basin by controlling land drainage, water abstraction, fisheries and river pollution. However, they did not control sewerage services; this created major problems in achieving their goal and led to the next stage of consolidation.

1973: River Authorities replaced with 10 Regional Water Authorities that took control of all water supply, sewerage services and water management in each of the main river basins.

The Authorities’ employed 75,000 people, had total annual revenue of £350m, annual investment of £300m and inherited debt of £1.7bn. In today’s money these figures are £5.3bn, £4.5bn and £26bn.

Central Government took control of funding investment and set limits for each Authority.

High inflation in late 1970s and early 1980s reduced availability of capital for investment leading to increased problems.

1983: In response to these problems the 1983 Water Act stated that water customers were best served by an efficiently run water utility providing prescribed service standards at least cost. This allowed the Authorities to operate in a more commercial manner with less involvement of local authority representatives and paved the way for privatisation. It also allowed Authorities to borrow directly from the private capital markets rather than solely from central government.

Information taken from 2006 publication “The development of the water industry in England and Wales”.

Privatisation Failure

Privatisation of the Regional Water Authorities was proposed by Margaret Thatcher’s Government in February 1985 and debated in Parliament in 1986. While the propo sal was claimed to be a way to secure more investment it was motivated by Conservative policy which, arguably, blinded politicians to the widely anticipated problems of creating private monopolies. The debates included what now seem to be strong arguments against the privatisation and weak rebuttals in its favour. This is particularly the case in the speech given by Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat MP 1974-2024) on 23rd June 1986 which includes prescient statements such as:

• “Water is not a national asset; rather it is a community asset.”

• “The Government have seized on the idea of taking away our present structure … because they realise that the water industry's assets are worth £27 billion.”

• “The danger is that what will be of greatest interest to the new private companies will be raising money from the consumer where they can raise it. However, there is not much money in sewerage or in environmental protection. They are not very profit-producing

The Government abandoned the privatisation on 3rd July 1986 one week after securing support for it against opposition. This, however, appears to have been a political tactic because it was introduced again after the general election in 1987, this time with the proposal included in the Conservative Party’smanifesto.

The Government sold the Regional Water Authorities in September 1989 for £7.6bn (28% of the book value of their assets). To ensure the new companies were attractive to buyers and viable, the Government gave them a “green dowry” comprising a £1.5bn capital injection to fund improvements and modernisation, a write-off of £5bn of existing debts and £12bn of capital tax allowances. In today’s money these amounts are equivalent to £23.7bn, £4.7bn, £15.6bn and £37.4bn. Overall, the public purse did not gain any net income from the privatisation.

While the public now see privatisation as having been a failure, this was not immediately apparent with an increase in investment in the first 5 years leading to improvements in quality of tap water and a reduction of leakages and pollution - albeit funded by significant increases in prices.

The problems that we are now all too aware of seem to have started around 1995 with water restrictions in the hot summer, caps on price increased imposed by Ofwat, and cancellation of the Government’s ‘golden shares’ allowing water companies to be bought and sold.

During privatisation, the Government cancelled the existing £5bn of debt and sold the companies with 100% equity; this did not last long, and debt was quickly increased to a reasonable level of 20% of funds and then over the next 10 years to 60%. These financial changes were part and parcel of the ‘take over games’ that saw European and U.S. firms buying into UK water at values that made a mockery of their value at privatisation.

In 2005, the problem was made much worse by the financial engineering carried out by venture capitalists such as the consortium led by Australian investment bank Macquarrie who purchased Thames Water from RWE in 2006 and then extracted £2.8bn in dividends and service charges to parent companies leaving the operating company with unaffordable debt of 80%.

“A previously staid business of pipes and sewage treatment works was packaged into a complex corporate structure, with eight layers of ownership – including a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, which allowed debt to be layered on debt, like the tiers in a wedding cake

(Source: Guardian newspaper article by Nils Pratley on 10th July 2024.)

The Government encouraged the public to buy shares in the new water companies by inviting them to become H2Owners and by ensuring that they could sell the shares before they had paid for them. The share offering was almost 6 times over-subscribed and just under half the shares were sold to 2.7 million small investors. On the day of the sale, the shares were trading at premiums of between 24% and 33% giving many people a quick profit which averaged around £400 (£1,200 today).

The National Rivers Authority (NRA) was created at the same time as the privatisation to take responsibility for duties that had not been passed to the Water Companies. This included land drainage and flood risk management, fisheries, water quality management, pollution prevention, and water resource management. In 1996, the NRA was replaced by the Environment Agency.

The last piece of the puzzle needed to provide oversight of private monopolies was the Office of Water Services or Ofwat. The primary duties of this agency are to regulate prices, protect the interests of consumers, and ensure that companies carry out their functions and can finance them. Ofwat carries out a review every 5 years to set the ‘K’ factors that are used to determine prices. The next review is due to be completed in December 2024.

It is only very recently that Ofwat has ‘woken up’ to the problems it has allowed to happen by turning a blind eye to the financial chicanery by the water companies; and, in March 2023 it announced new powers that allow it to stop the payment of dividends if they would risk the company’s financial resilience, and to take enforcement action against water companies that don’t link dividend payments to performance. This has been picked up and taken forward in the Water (Special Measures) Bill included in the Kings Speech on 17th July 2024.

While there are many aspects of the perceived failure of the privatised water companies, the most significant in the last 5-10 years has been the increased pollution of our rivers and coastal waters. This has been coupled with what appears to have been systematic and illegal under -reporting of pollution incidents arising from spilling from Sewage Treatment Plants and more focus on river habitat than on water quality, flow and flooding.

In their defence, austerity and political pressure have cut the Environment agency’s money and manpower and required slow litigation and largely inconsequential penalties.

Pollution - Going full circle

Despite the best efforts of Thames Water staff on the ground, the situation over recent decades, especially in terms of sewage treatment and overflows to our water courses, has deteriorated due to aging infrastructure, ground water ingress into leaking sewers, increases in wastewater flows due to higher per capita water consumption and new housing developments, more intense rainfall events, and lack of capacity at sewage pumping stations and treatment works.

The major upgrade planned for the Bampton STW to increase in treatment capacity from 23 to 36 litres per second (a 50% increase),which would reduce the need for untreated discharges to Shill Brook, was originally due to commence in January 2025 but has now been pushed back due to funding constraints into the next asset management panning period (2025 - 2030).

The situation today, is much the same as it was in the 1860s when, after persistent lobbying, the Government established a Roya l Commission on the Pollution of Rivers. This delivered its first report, on the upper Thames, in March 1866 and led to the creation of Thames Conservancy.

The report includes a description of the problem that many will recognise - although perhaps it is described in stronger terms than those used today!

Political promises – not worth the paper they are written on

Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990):

Opposition to water privatisation is "emotive nonsense" –privatisation has improved environmental regulation and has allowed companies to raise capital for the investment needed to enhance water quality. (Paraphrased from Margaret Thatcher’s book “The Downing Street Years”)

John Major (1990-1997):

"It is simply not acceptable that so many of our rivers and beaches are polluted. We must ensure that water companies invest in the infrastructure needed to prevent this."

(Speech on environmental policy, 1994).

Tony Blair (1997-2007):

"Our beaches and rivers are cleaner than they have been for decades, but we cannot be complacent. Continued investment and regulation are necessary to maintain and improve water quality." (Interview with The Guardian, 2005).

Gordon Brown (2007-2010):

"Water quality is a key priority, and we must tackle pollution at its source. Our environment and health depend on it." (Statement to Parliament, 2008).

David Cameron (2010-2016):

"We are committed to ensuring that every household has access to clean water. The health of our rivers and lakes is a testament to our ongoing efforts to reduce pollution and improve water infrastructure."

(Speech at a water summit, 2014).

Theresa May (2016-2019):

"Clean water is essential for public health and our environment. We must take decisive action to reduce contamination and protect our water sources."

(Press release, 2017).

Boris Johnson (2019-2022):

"The quality of our water is a national priority. We must continue to invest in modernizing our infrastructure to prevent pollution and ensure safe drinking water for all."

(Interview with BBC News, 2020).

Rishi Sunak (2022-2024):

"Ensuring the highest standards of water quality is crucial. Our government is focused on reducing pollution and upgrading our water systems to safeguard public health."

(Speech on environmental policy, 2023).

Hope for the Future?

Local: Imposition of Grampian conditions on new developments

As a result of pressure from Windrush Against Sewage Pollution (Wasp), councillors in West Oxfordshire have pushed for so-called Grampian conditions on developments, which state that they must not be occupied until Thames Water has invested to upgrade sewage treatment works to cope. A Grampian condition means a restriction is placed on a development until certain conditions have been met.