Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company
By Hilaire
Brass plaque of Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company, courtesy London Museum of Water and Steam
Notoriously bad water
The Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company supplied water to premises in south London from the mid 19th century until 1903. Situated by the river where Battersea Power Station now stands, at its height the waterworks stretched across 45 acres. The quality of the company’s water though was notoriously bad.
Until the mid-17th century, water supply to the capital was primarily via conduits. These were gradually superseded by pumped water supplied by private companies. In the early 19th century, the number of water companies operating in London increased rapidly, with two or more companies often competing to supply the same area.
18th century origins
The Southwark Water Works, founded in 1760, drew untreated water from the Thames at Bankside. In 1834, an Act of Parliament established the works as the Southwark Water Company, and required it to move its intake to Battersea and to filter the water before it was pumped to households in south London. In 1839, the company acquired an initial 18 acres of land at Battersea Fields, to the east of today’s Chelsea Bridge. This was mostly marshland.
Stanford’s map of central London 1898
Beginning of the reservoir
Work was carried out in 1840 to create a seven-acre reservoir, 2 ¼ acre filter bed, engine house, boiler house and superintendent’s quarters. A Bolton & Watt engine was then moved from Bankside and installed at the Battersea site. The engine pumped filtered water from the reservoir, which filled with Thames water at high tide via 20” cast iron pipes. A Cornish engine, specifically designed for the site, was added in December; it did not perform as efficiently as expected. To correct this, the superintendent designed a 130ft standpipe to absorb irregular water surges and thus create a steady water pressure as it reached the mains. A second standpipe was erected in 1847 following the installation of another engine.
Waterworks standpipe and chimney, 1914, courtesy London Museum of Water and Steam.
Rivals join forces
In 1845, the company amalgamated with a rival firm, Vauxhall Water Company, to found the Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company, which operated primarily from the Battersea site. Water was still drawn from the Thames at high tide and passed through a series of settling reservoirs and filter beds before being pumped to homes and businesses. The company gradually expanded the works at Battersea until covered 45 acres.
The Drink of Death
There was growing concern by then about sourcing drinking water from the Thames as far downriver as Battersea, as London’s sewers discharged into the river. In 1850 the microscopist Arthur Hassall described the company's water as ‘the most disgusting which I have ever examined.’ He reported that a local surgeon who had tied a gauze bag over a tap, found after a few days that it contained ‘a mass sufficient to fill an eggshell, consisting principally of the hairs of mammalian animals.’
In 1831 cholera arrived in the capital, and there were several devastating outbreaks in the following decades. At that time, it was widely believed that the disease was spread by poisonous gases, from sewers and swamps, for example. The physician Dr John Snow however believed cholera was water-borne.
In 1854 a cholera epidemic claimed over 10,000 lives in London. Many streets in Lambeth and Southwark were served by both the Lambeth Water Company, which drew its water upstream at Thames Ditton – beyond the river’s tidal range and therefore unpolluted by the capital’s sewage – and the Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company, which still drew its supply directly from the Thames at Battersea. By establishing which company supplied households where cholera fatalities had been recorded, Dr Snow demonstrated a much higher mortality rate in households supplied by the Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company compared to the Lambeth Water Company. It's estimated that, of the total deaths, 4,267 were linked to drinking water supplied by the Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company.
Saved by the law
The following year a new law came into effect, which stipulated that water companies must only extract water from the river above Teddington Lock. By 1857, the Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company drew all its water from a site at Hampton and pumped over 10 million gallons of water a day to Battersea for filtration and distribution. As demand increased, improved pumping capacity was needed, and a third standpipe, this one exceeding 180ft, was installed in 1856. These tall standpipes were a prominent feature of the otherwise flat landscape, described at the time as appearing like ‘a monster hairpin stuck in the earth.’
The Battersea site continued to expand over the next 15 years, adding more filter beds and, in 1870, a 24-million-gallon depositing reservoir. However, with the ever-increasing demand for a continuous supply of water to households and businesses, the company built four huge, covered reservoirs at Nunhead and shifted the focus of their operations outside London.
In 1903, the Metropolitan Water Board took control of all eight London water companies, and the Battersea site was gradually wound down and sold off. In the 1920s the site was selected as the location for Battersea Power Station.