City of Nottingham Water Department

(Old) Nottingham Waterworks Company

Prior to 1696, water for the people of Nottingham was obtained from the river or from shallow wells, and carriers, known as Higglers, delivered it to those who wanted it. In 1696, the first Nottingham Waterworks Company obtained a lease from the Corporation, allowing it to build pumps and a water wheel to drive them, to extract water from the River Leen. The water was pumped to a reservoir to the east of Park Row, from where a network of pipes fed much of the town. The waterwheel and pumps were very similar to a system which the engineer George Sorocold had installed at London Bridge, and he may have been associated with the Nottingham scheme, but it is also possible that it was the Nottingham engineer Peter Whalley who designed it. In the eighteenth century Nottingham experienced rapid growth, as a result of the development of the frame knitting industry and the lace industry, with the population expanding five-fold from 10,000 in 1720 to 50,000 in 1830. The River Leen could no longer provide sufficient water to meet the need, and it also became polluted with sewage and industrial waste. Increasingly, there were complaints about the quality of the water.

By 1830 the River Leen was sufficiently polluted that it was abandoned as a source of water, and instead, the company constructed a reservoir covering about 1 acre (0.40 ha) in Scotholme, which was fed by spring water. They also constructed a new pumping station close to the Lean near Castle Rock. Water flowed by gravity from the new reservoir to the pumping station, through a 10-inch (25 cm) iron pipe, from where it was pumped to a service reservoir close to the site of the General Hospital. Power could be provided either by a 16 hp (12 kW) waterwheel or by a beam engine with a similar power output. The pumping station was located in Brewhouse Yard, and appeared on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey maps in 1880.

Zion Hill Water and Marble Works

A second private company, the Zion Hill Water and Marble Works was formed in the late 18th century. Zion Hill was in the Canning Circus area, and the company had two wells near Alfreton Road. The wells were 230 feet (70 m) deep, from which water was pumped by steam engines, which also powered some lace making machines and saws to cut marble. They supplied a fairly small area with good quality water, partly through pipes, and also by using water carriers to deliver the product. The company had ceased to function independently by 1824.

Nottingham New Waterworks Company

In order to supply water to the north-eastern part of the city, the Nottingham New Waterworks Company built the Northern Waterworks on North Sherwood Street. Operation commenced on 1 December 1824, with water pumped by a steam engine from a well into a cistern. Some of the water was piped to homes, and some was supplied to carriers.

Trent Waterworks Company

With demand for water outstripping the available sources, the Trent Waterworks Company was formed by an act of Parliament, the Nottingham Water Act 1826 (7 Geo. 4. c. cxi), in May 1826, and in 1830 employed Thomas Hawksley to design and build a new waterworks at Trent Bridge. Hawksley had been born and educated in Nottingham, and at the age of 15 had started an apprenticeship with Edward Staveley, who ran an architectural practice and was Borough Surveyor. They were joined by Robert Jalland, and the three men later became partners. Hawksley was 23 when he was appointed engineer to the Trent Bridge works, which were completed in 1831. He constructed brick tunnels in the beds of sand and gravel on the north side of the River Trent, which filtered the water before it was collected in a rectangular reservoir. From there it was pumped by a single cylinder beam engine through an 18-inch (46 cm) cast iron pipe to a service reservoir at Park Row.

Hawksley wanted water to be available constantly, whereas most engineers of the time favoured an intermittent system, where the water was supplied infrequently, and used to fill cisterns. Thus Thomas Wicksteed and James Simpson, who were working for the London water companies, believed that such a system was unworkable, as taps and fittings would soon start to leak, resulting in it being impossible to supply the volume of water required to keep the system pressurised. Hawksley addressed this by designing fittings that were more robust, and which could be repaired easily if they did start to leak. The job of convincing plumbers to use them was difficult, but he persisted, and Nottingham had the first constant pressurised system in the country. This prevented contamination from entering the clean water mains. Much of the country was affected by outbreaks of cholera in 1832, at which point the Trent Waterworks Company was supplying water to some 15,000 people, out of a total population of around 53,000. 289 people died in Nottingham, but when there was a further nationwide outbreak in 1848, Nottingham was virtually unaffected. The town's Sanitary Committee were convinced that a major factor was the availability of a clean, filtered water supply, although the mechanism by which water-borne diseases such as cholera were transmitted was not clearly understood at that time.

Writing in 1935, J. Holland Walker reported:

At the northern end of Trent Bridge, about on the site now occupied by the Town Arms Hotel, stood the old water works of Nottingham, which were such a charming feature of the landscape forty or fifty years ago, but which have now completely disappeared. A tall brick chimney, mellowed from its first rawness by age, and a grove of well-grown trees marked the old pumping station. There was a great settling tank, or reservoir, receiving water from the River Trent, which reservoir occupied both sides of the road, and a faint echo of which remains in the gardens between Messrs. Turney's works and the river. After this water had passed the filter-bed it was pumped to the reservoir on the eastern side at the upper end of Park Row. For many years this reservoir was open, and surrounded by trees, and was an extremely picturesque object, but some forty or fifty years ago it was covered over by a great concrete roof, which has remained until 1925, when it was broken with considerable difficulty, and the site devoted to the erection of an out-patients' department for the Nottingham General Hospital. These waterworks at Trent Bridge and also the reservoir on Park Row, were erected in 1831, and we are informed that the water was forced through the mains from Trent Bridge by an engine of forty horse power, at the rate of ten hogsheads per minute. The reservoir is a hundred and thirty feet above the Trent, and in 1850 the water distributed from it through about twelve miles of pipe to the neighbouring districts.