Wateringbury smells abominably(1874)

Post date: Sep 26, 2012 2:30:4 PM

The following is a report made by the Medical Officer of Health to the Malling Rural Sanitary Authority in 1874 as quoted by John R. Lambert in his study "Wateringbury -its population and mortality" (dated October 1975; copy held in WLHS library, ref 39):

The dwellings on the left for the first quarter of a mile from the station.....are drained directly into the streamlet passing near them to fall into the Medway, but those from the Mill up to ......the top of the High Street .....are drained by a Sewer terminating in a series of three cesspools in Mr. Fremlin's orchard, the overflow from the last of which is conveyed in an iron pipe across the narrow part of the Mill Pond into the stream below, and so into the Medway.

This sewer receives the drainage of stables, pigsties, a slaughter house, privies, a brewery, and about 20 dwellings. The largest of the cesspools has the large superficial area of 21 square yards; it is imperfectly covered in, and smells abominably; the stream after receiving its outflow was foul both in its bed and its banks which were coated with offensive black mud.

........On the day of inspection the cesspools smelled badly 200 or 300 yards off in the direction of the wind and tainted the air offensively for some hundred yards along the High Street.

See also the vicar's comments on a proposed general drainage system at Health and sanitation( 1898).

The original report is held in Kent archives reference CKS-P385/23/1.