TrustNews Jun 21
Contagion, change and coincidence in Winchester, from 1299 to 2021 - a quick trot through the centuries
As ambitions to open up the waterways in the Silver Hill area, and also to erect a plaque commemorating Juliana de la Floude, the Winchester washer-woman who in 1299 prompted the legal ruling that ‘water has always been common’, remain just that - ambitions - it might be timely to reflect on Winchester’s more than usually troubled history with water, and its cleanliness or otherwise.
At the same time it's interesting to look again at the pandemic waves of cholera that occurred globally and locally, in the light of current events: the drive to understand a new virus, the debates on isolation, quarantine, fresh air and indeed the role of poverty and inequality in the spread of disease.
Cholera arrived in Britain in Sunderland in November 1831. From then on the risk was ever-present, highest in coastal areas (especially sea ports) and in ‘filthy and ill-ventilated quarters’, as a document presented to the council on 19th October 1848, signed by the city's medical practitioners, put it. The Hampshire Chronicle in October 1848 wrote of ‘plague spots’ in Forder and Poulsome Buildings, in the Silver Hill area – incidentally built by dynasties of local councillors, behind the Woolstaplers warehouse, also built by William Forder. Dr John Snow, working in London, famously established the following year that the disease was water-borne.
The Winchester doctors and others were aware of the threatened re-appearance of cholera and of the defective state of the town's sewerage and drainage. Although piped water had long since been provided in the smarter areas, in the absence of an organised sewerage system cess pits overflowed and polluted rivers and wells. Many of course took their drinking water from the river. The author of The Land We Live ln, also in 1848, wrote of Winchester: ‘The delightful clearness of this water, running, as it does, over a chalk and pebbly bottom, gives a freshness and healthful appearance to the district which we fear it does not possess, the cholera having been rather destructive in the low-lying neighbourhoods during its last visitation.’
It might be startling at first to learn that Winchester College had its own brewery, and that the scholars historically were given an allowance of three pints of beer a day each. When one reflects, though, on the quality of drinking water at the time, the flourishing Temperance movement of the 19th century becomes more surprising. Ale was a great deal more hygienic. The brewery was built in the late 14th century, in the very early days of the college, and only ceased operations in 1904, by which time the water supply was assured.
The government's Report on the Mortality of Cholera in England, 1848-49, noted that the wealthier districts with only half the worst death rate were likely to be on higher ground. It wasn't poverty, of course, that afflicted Winchester College in the cholera outbreaks in 1846 and 1852, it was the low-lying site.
When George Moberly, College headmaster from 1835 until 1866, was subsequently suggested as Bishop of Sydney, he was rejected as an ‘unsuccessful schoolmaster’ - the outbreaks and numerous deaths, with a consequent slump in pu pil numbers, had occurred on his watch.
His successor, George Ridding, threw himself into civic life and became a leading light in the sanitation movement. (He was also a promotor of the Coffee Tavern, an establishment designed to encourage working people to socialise without alcohol, so his faith in the future of the clean water supply must have been firm.)
The battle to provide sanitation and thus clean water - between the ‘muckabites’ who refused to spend the required money and the ‘anti-muckabites’ such as Dr Ridding who believed it to be essential - is well documented, and was protracted.
W H Boorman of the Hampshire Field Club, who is the most significant chronicler, wrote that ‘Procrastination and committee formation by council and inhabitants seems to have been a way of life for Wintonians for the next forty years’ after the opening salvos. As Barbara Carpenter Turner, the doyenne of Winchester historians, put it, ‘ln these public health matters, Winchester soon gained an unfortunate reputation’. The breakthrough was the pumping station on Garnier Road, opened in 1878. It was built on land bought by Winchester College in 1860 and sold to the Mayor and Alderman of Winchester as the Urban Sanitary Authority in December 1877 for £650. So development was pretty swift. Redundant for some time, in April 2021 it was announced that the pumping station has been bought by Winchester College, which seems nicely symmetrical.
It’s hard not to recall the Silver Hill and other sagas of the last 25 years or more. The authors of One Great Win, the latest in the long line of consultations aimed at creating a Vision for the city for 2020-30, say ‘It became clear to us in almost every conversation that there was a sense of transition, transformation or moving forward being thwarted. That something was stopping the city from making even small changes.’
Juliana brought change with her legal challenge; the ruling, later known as the Concordance de Julian, is enshrined in the United Nations Convention of Human Rights. Although global provision of clean water is far from complete, her case will have saved billions of lives.
Until early 2020 one might have said of Winchester’s predilection for procrastination, ‘at least lives aren't at risk this time’, but the coronavirus has taught that the unexpected is never impossible.
Judith Martin
My particular thanks to Dr Martin Gregory of the Hampshire Industrial Archaeology Society and to Suzanne Foster of Winchester College for the information on the pumping station site.
Editor’s note: Members of the Trust visited the Garnier Road pumping station in 2009 and the visit was elegantly written up for TrustNews by the late Robin Merton. An extract is available in this Newsletter, the full article is in our archive at www.cwtarchive.co.uk/archive/TN09/jun 12. shtml.