A Century of Cleansing Winchester

Abstract

The provision of mains sewerage and the centralised collection of refuse are two of the most long-lasting infrastructure projects brought in by Victorian engineers. The Sanitary Act of 1866 required local Councils to supply ‘a sufficient sewerage system and a supply of wholesome water’, triggering a large number of schemes throughout the country. The City of Winchester is taken as an example of a city slow to implement the Act. When mains drainage came to the city, it was allied to a refuse destructor to supply energy to the pumping plant. Over a century of increasing population requiring sewerage and refuse services over an increasing area, the subsequent history of the plant provides an insight into the development of such services in a typical, medium-sized British town.

Keywords::

• mains drainage
• mains sewerage
• refuse destructor
• refuse incinerator
• steam
• pumping engine
• boiler
• Winchester (Hampshire
• United Kingdom)
• (Sir) James Lemon
• Alfred Fryer

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Hampshire Cultural Trust (HCT), the Hampshire Records Office (HRO) and The Southern Daily Echo for help in identifying material and for permission to use the illustrations so identified. The remaining illustrations are from the author’s collection.

Notes

1. Barbara Carpenter Turner, A History of the Royal Hampshire County Hospital (Phillimore, 1986); and W.H. Boorman, ‘Health and Sanitation in Victorian Winchester’, Proc. Hants Field Club, 46 (1991), pp. 161–180.

2. Southern Echo, 9 June 1978.

3. From an unsigned paper for Southern Water, c1990. ‘These ten years, marked by over caution on the part of the Council in the selection of final plans for the system and ineptitude in efforts to obtain land for a sewage outfall farm, amounted almost to an attempt to delay the inevitable for as long as possible. The Local Government Board in London […]wrote repeatedly to the Council […] in tones which ranged in the late 1860s to 1876 from impatience to sarcasm, and finally to unrestricted bluntness.’

4. Advertisement in the Hampshire Chronicle, 5 October 1877.

5. The Hampshire Observer, 11 May 1878, and Hampshire Chronicle, 4 May 1878, both carried long articles on the laying of the foundation stone.

6. Quoted in Southern Echo, 9 June 1978.

7. Hampshire Chronicle, 31 January 1880.

8. Hampshire Observer, 2 November 1878.

9. Southern Water unsigned paper (as note 3).

10. Hampshire Record Office (HRO), Winchester City Contracts file W/G1/19, 22, 25, 26 and 28 (1880-1882) gives details of individual contracts.

11. George Watkins, Stationary Steam Engines of Great Britain, Volume 7, pp. 60–64, (Landmark Publishing, 2003). Watkins visited the site in 1938. The National Monuments Record reference number is SER233a. See also Hampshire Office (HRO), Winchester City Contracts file W/G1/46 (1882).

12. British Patent No. 3125, 5 August 1876.

13. W.H. Maxwell, The Removal of Town Refuse (The Sanitary Publishing Co. Ltd., 1905), pp. 91 and 3478.

14. Carpenter Turner.

15. The population of Winchester increased to over 23,000 (1911 census) and nearly 26,000 (1951 census).

16. James Simpson & Co. contemporary publicity material and Hampshire Chronicle, 22 July 1905. This engine was photographed by George Watkins in 1938 (NMR reference number SER233b).

17. Walter S. Hutton, Steam-Boiler Construction, (Crosby Lockwood & Son, 1903), pp. 444–463.

18. This engine is now at Twyford Waterworks Museum on loan from Winchester Museums/Hampshire Cultural Trust.

19. Hampshire Chronicle, 22 July 1905.

20. HRO W/G1/241, (1910). Contract for the steam engine to drive the screens. This engine is now at Bursledon Brickworks Museum.

21. HRO W/G1/343, 358 et al. (19268). Contracts for building and equipping the Pearn Pump house.

22. HRO W/G1/487 (1938). Contract for the Carrier-Tuppen destructor.

23. HRO W/G1/645, 688 (19479). Contracts for the reconstruction of the incinerator to incorporate a two cell design from Heenan & Froude.

24. HRO W/G1/714 (1950).

25. John Dossor, Report on the re-organisation of Garnier Road Pumping Station, 20 August 1954.

26. Engine numbers 6007 and 6008. By this date, W. Sisson & Co. was part of Bellis and Morcom.

27. HRO W/G1/922 (1958).

28. HRO W/G1/849, 894, 916, 941 and 942 (19589). Implementation of the Dossor report recommendations.

29. HRO W/G1/1076 (1963). Contract with Furze & Co. of Nottingham to rebuild chimney.

30. Hutton (note 17) quotes refuse of average moisture as evaporating 2.0 to 2.5 lb of water per pound of refuse burnt. A trial carried out at Garnier Road 22 February to 1 March 1953 produced the reduced result of 1.1 lb of water evaporated per pound of refuse burnt.

31. Hampshire Chronicle, 26 May 1978.