When There Weren't Even Standpipes (25 June 1976)
The news that Milton Keynes citizens may soon be queueing for water from standpipes is serious. Nevertheless, if it does come to pass, it will not be the end of the world.
Curiously, except for the disabled, the people it will mainly inconvenience will be the very people who have known most about it in the past. These are the aged. Many of them, especially in the villages, remember when not even a standpipe was available, because there were no mains.
All water had to be drawn from pumps, wells, springs, rain-tubs and the like.
“Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water” was not then just a romantic nursery rhyme. It was a common fact of everyday life. Even I can remember times of drought during which my brother and I carried many a pail of water between us from the spring up the hill before we were big enough to carry one each. Men, and some women, too, could comfortably carry two pails for quite long distances by means of a wooden yoke across the shoulders.
OCCUPANTS
Hereabouts, when mains had been laid, a good many houses were not connected and the occupants had to use standpipes. They still tell of having to thaw the pipes before they could use them on frosty mornings.
The system of parish pumps and wells, supplemented by the occasional clear stream, was pretty well universal in country districts up to less than a century ago.
At Fenny the parish pump was in the middle of Aylesbury Street. There were also many wells, most of which were sunk for the exclusive use of occupiers of particular premises. The parish water cart, normally used for laying the dusty roads, could also be called up in emergency.
Pumps and draw wells were all very fine for villages, but for more thickly populated places they became a health hazard leading to serious epidemics. At Fenny this risk was doubled by the primitive sewerage system – most of the sewage went straight into the brooks and river.
SANITARY
In 1885 the Newport Pagnell Board of Guardians set up a Fenny Stratford Sanitary Committee to deal not only with sewerage but also with water supply. Strange now to think that the first piped water system was set up as much or more with an eye to health as to convenience.
The town’s first water works were at Great Brickhill and were inaugurated in 1890 or 1892. According to one writer they were hailed “with such flourishes and trumpets and triumphant shouts as led to residents to believe that in them they possessed an inexhaustable (sic) supply which would last out all their wants until the crack of doom – and even then be almost sufficient to extinguish the flames which we are taught follow on that said particular crack.
In the event, less than 20 years elapsed before those works had to be superseded by others at Sandhouse.
The sanitary committee was absorbed by the town’s first urban council – set up in 1895 – who began a blitz on the old wells. Within only a few years they closed 40 and ordered the owners – notably innkeepers whose pumps were in backyards along with the lavatories – to take the town supply instead.
Many of the old wells were then forgotten to the extent that property was built over them and in my own time in Bletchley a number have come to light when property has been in process of repair or alteration. Indeed, I am told that on a quite recent development a house has been built on a well that was an official emergency standby as recently as the last war.
The former Jacks and Jills are now Darby and Joans and water carrying is now a problem for them, even though the new plastic pails be times lighter than the old metal ones. But it should be easy for younger people. After all, many of them get plenty of practice when they spend their holidays camping or caravanning.
And in the villages it could provide an amusing and authentic touch of Ye Real Olde Country Life for those good people who seem to have willingly paid enormous sums for 16th century shells only to lead late-20th century lives in them.
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