Woolwich reservoirs and the Kent Water Company - Mulgrave Pond, Woolwich Common and Shooters Hill

 

So perhaps now it’s time to get back to the Kent Water Company? We left them here three weeks ago as a functioning works, duly provided with steam engines, at Brookmill in Deptford where they had already been for over 100 years.  By 1830 they appeared to be a stable functioning company. As part of various legal processes they were required to take on a supply of water to the Royal Dockyards and the various military establishments in Woolwich.  To be honest I have found, and been sent, enough material to fill an encyclopaedia! And the rest of this article is made up of tiny snippets from that.

There were many reservoir sites in Shooters Hill and Woolwich and I now need to identify which ones were for military use or were built by other companies.  Perhaps the best place to start would be with a reservoir built by the Kent Co. for its own use –and even that isn’t straight forward.

Kent Water Co. had a reservoir which they used to supply customers. There is mention of their ‘high level reservoir’ but not where it was, except ‘Shooters Hill’ where there are several sites and all marked ‘Kent Water Co.’.  It was in what is now Constitution Rise – and needs to be distinguished from another reservoir  near the end of that road but in Red Lion Lane, and of course the site of the ‘mineral wells’.

The Kent reservoir is not shown on all maps. It was an oblong structure running south from Constitution Rise on a site which is now 1930s housing – it could be represented by a long driveway at one property. It was ’a covered reservoir built with brick arches, capable, theoretically, of holding 300,000 gallons’. I am not aware of the date of its construction – some sources say ‘1890s’. However it appears on maps by 1863 and was probably earlier.  Apparently it received water not from Brookmill but from the well at Orpington, which seems a bit strange.  I do not know exactly when Kent Water took over Orpington - most probably in the 1850s. They sent the pumping engine from the defunct Charlton works there in 1875 but did not have rights to supply water there until 1877.   The Shooters Hill reservoir appears to have gone by the early 1930s from aerial photographs taken then. It had been scheduled for closure by the Metropolitan Water Board because of its poor condition.  In 1911 there was a press report of the discovery of a parcel containing a dead baby.

There were undoubtedly other sites of 'reservoirs ‘in Woolwich which were not directly to do with military use. I described in a previous article the use in 1812 of a reservoir in Francis Street which was one of two ‘Bowater Ponds’. The Admiralty took them over in 1856 and the site was cleared for the Royal Marine Infirmary. A letter of 1854 from the Woolwich Board of Health gives some details, ‘the reservoir in a filthy state.  Water w« filtered at Lewisham, but by the lime was pumped to Woolwich it was in an impure state, as evident by two leeches and other offensive things .... The oldest inhabitant could not remember it being cleaned...he had soma fine carp from it which weighed ten pounds each’.

 There was another 'reservoir'' at the corner of Anglesea Road when ‘what is now the north end of Brookhill Road was called ‘Waterman’s Fields’.

It seems likely that there were other ’ponds’ some of which were used for military supply is and some seem to have belonged to the Bowater family who owned much of West Woolwich. There is a large pond now in Repository Woods - which seems to have been created in the later 19^th conferee.  In the past there was a reservoir (the Long Pond) in this area built in the 1750s, to supply the naval dockyard. In 1806 it became a private garden for the Garrison Commandant, and an ice house for drinks in the officers’ mess. It was filled in during the 1940s.

A few enquiries about water use by the various Government bodies in Woolwich have resulted in enormous amounts of material about negotiations and contracts. I can only just touch on a few here and include a few snippets.  Water from many sources was used in the past at the dockyard, rope works and arsenal before the 19^th century.  Much may have come from the Thames.  There are hints:-

– for example:  ‘Royal Carriage Department ...had a small reservoir in Basin square’ or ....’An artesian well in the Dockyard’.. or ...’Barrack latrines etc. to be flushed with Thames water from government fire mains’ ..or.. ‘the artesian well in the Royal Arsenal’ ..or ..’boilers and hydraulic machinery to be supplied with Thames water’.  

 The obvious example of a military water site in Woolwich is the one which you can still see- Mulgrave Pond.  If you haven’t seen the pond – it used to be possible to see it from the top deck of a 53 – or you could walk down to it and see the ducks, but now it’s ‘privately owned’ and its all high walls and locked gates.-So, sorry, if you never saw it while you could ...it’s high up on a hill just off the centre of Woolwich and it is a pond surrounded by trees and a ‘big’ house.

Mulgrave Pond is another site which was owned by the Bowater family. It was built as a reservoir in the 1750s to supply water to fight fires in the Royal Dockyard and fresh water for the new officers’ houses. The Board of Ordnance bought the freehold in 1805 and fenced it in, to stop horses drinking at it. They also built a small engine house which was later used as an observatory by Peter Barlow, Professor of Mathematics at the Royal Military Academy.

So, that leaves as far as I’m aware with just three reservoir sites in the western area of Woolwich, two of which were built for military use and managed by the Kent Water Company. There are of course a lot more reservoirs in the area and I’ll get to them in future weeks.

So, Woolwich Common.  There was a covered reservoir on Woolwich Common. I guess the remains of it still exist in a clump of trees, also marked by a reed bed and scattered willow and alder trees. It’s a sort of circular patch at the back of that Free School in Shooters Hill Road.  Kent Water Works Company dug it to supply Woolwich Dockyard in case of fire, and water was pumped here by the company’s steam engines in Deptford. The engineer who oversaw it being built for the Company was Thomas Wicksteed – the man who was famous for his work as Engineer with the East London Water Works.  His work was monitored by two Royal Engineers - Lt. William Denison, for the Admiralty, and Col. George Hoste, for the Board of Ordnance, who must have died before the work was finished.

The agreement said that the Kent Water Company, at the Government's expense, ‘alter and adapt their  works to supply at the elevation of 180 feet above the Lower  Woolwich Road', and to keep the reservoir constantly filled with at least 71,000 cubic feet of water. They must for ever after keep the reservoir in repair ‘. It is probably not true that it was built by convict labour.

Woolwich Dockyard closed in the 1870s and the War Office adapted the reservoir to supply the rest of the military estate in Woolwich.  By then it was fed by artesian wells and supplemented with machinery to soften and purify the water. Later was it covered.

 Press reports over the years record many suicides in this reservoir –so many that it was suggested that equipment to ‘drag’ inside it be kept at Shooters Hill police station, nearby.  One example in 1882 was the discovery of the body of a young woman who had managed to access the water although 'it is surrounded by a fence closely studded with tenter-hooks, and it is inconceivable that a man, far less a woman could climb over it’. The reservoir was often not visited for some weeks and there are reports of undiscovered corpses being ‘gnawed by rats.

This reservoir only contained water for extinguishing fire in the Royal Arsenal and Royal Dockyard and other Government works at Woolwich.   A main from the reservoir connected with a system of pipes in the various works which it was protecting.   They were set so that just by screwing a delivery pipe to it ‘water will ...  reach to the top of all the buildings without the aid of fire engines’. The perimeter fence was replaced with brick walls in the early 1840s.

I do not know when the Woolwich reservoir closed .its twin in Greenwich Park seems to have closed in 1891.  The Woolwich reservoir was still in use when it was municipalised in1904. Then if the military no longer had a use for it, negotiations would have to be done by the new Metropolitan Water Board. The history of that organisation says nothing about that at all.  It was still in use in 1922 when six policemen dived on to find a   drowned child, “Several score of children, were enjoying their half holiday bathing. One boy got into    difficulties  and disappeared’  Police-Sergeants Ford, Williams, and Jones, and Police-Constables Letheran, Hull and Currie, at once dashed to the spot, stripped, and dived in”.

So –that is the story of some if the Kent Water Company’s reservoirs in the Shooters Hill Area. . There are obviously more reservoirs on Shooters Hill and in Woolwich -I will get to them eventually.  Some of course are still in use and s far as I’m aware are all underground and include one which I think is 19^th century and others  which are very very new indeed. There are also over towards Plumstead several reservoirs which were built by the Plumstead Water Company and I will be doing a special chapter on them.

There was another structure on Shooters Hill which I’ve wondered whether to put in this section or not. It is sometimes described as a tank but other accounts say it was a ‘circular iron-lined reservoir of 1856 for supply of the Arsenal. It was just off the west side of Red Lion Lane at the end of the terrace of older houses and stood on Royal Military Academy land. I’m not really sure if Kent Water Company ever owned it or managed it but it appears on maps sometimes marked as reservoir

Thanks Ian Bull