Tuesday 16th July 2024  

A piped water supply for Quorn

The pictures below are of water drain covers situated near to the Quorn House Lodge in Meeting Street, Quorn. They are inscribed LCWW 1907, but what is the story behind them? A Google and British Newspaper Archive search revealed that LCWW was the acronym for the Leicester Corporation Water Works and 1907 the year of manufacture of the covers. The Leicester Waterworks Company had been founded in 1846. The company struggled to attract capital, so the Leicester Corporation invested in it. The company was then absorbed into the Corporation becoming initially the Leicester Waterworks Committee, then the Leicester Corporation Water Works. The research is summarised below with the newspaper headline taken from the Leicester Daily Mercury.

The New Water Supply for Quorn
On Monday June 1st, 1891, dignitaries, officials, and a small crowd of local residents gathered in Meeting Street near to Quorn House Lodge Gates to watch Mrs Farnham open the valve that would formally turn on a supply of water for the village. The meter that would register the amount of water used was also situated here.

The connection and completion of the works had actually taken place on the 21st May but, it was on this day 1st June at 12:30 that in addition to Mrs Farnham, Alderman Wood, Chairman of the Leicester Waterworks Committee and Mr F. Griffith Chief Engineer to Leicester Waterworks were joined by the Chairman of the Quorn Local Board, Mr J.D. Cradock and members W.E.B. Farnham, W. Richardson, J. Wright, J. Bolesworth, T. North, J. Callis and J. Darker. Mr. G. White the Clerk, Dr Skipworth the medical officer and Mr. G. Hodgson the Surveyor were also in attendance.

The fire brigade, under Captain T. Holmes, turned out and attached a standpipe near the meter. Mrs Farnham struggled to open the valve, and assistance was required, eventually a large jet of water made its appearance reaching as high as the trees in Mr. Farnham’s Park.

Wrights’ factory had been selected for an experiment, it being one of the tallest buildings in the village, which was to determine, for fire extinguishing purposes, the merits of the jet from the mains so it might be compared with that of the fire engine.

The old fire engine was in position, and although its nozzle was smaller than that of the mains, the twelve men that worked the manual engine saw their jet of water go slightly higher than that from the mains. Though it was said that it appeared there was very little between the two jets of water as both reached as high as the parapet of the factory.
A second jet was then bought to bear on the factory from the mains with little change from the first. It was explained that the current mains pressure for Quorn is 90 feet but when the works were complete Quorns pressure would increase to 150 feet, even more than Leicester’s!

The members of the Board and the Leicester visitors were then entertained to lunch and toasts were proposed, firstly, by Mr Cradock to the health of the Leicester Corporation and particularly Alderman Wood as they had fulfilled their obligations to Quorn in an admirable way and he hoped that future relations between the two bodies would always be amicable. Alderman Wood responded, speaking of how the corporation had fulfilled their obligations, and then went on to talk of the problems that were encountered in fulfilling their obligations to Quorn. These included having to take water from the Swithland Brook rather than the Bradgate Reservoir (now the Cropston Reservoir), construct a temporary corrugated iron engine house, pumping station with filters and a 6000-gallon cistern at Kinchley Hill, to be filled at least once a day. This, in addition to moving the meter and connection point from outside of Chaveney Manor to Quorn House had cost the Corporation an additional £1500, and the fact that the charging was at virtually cost price, Quorn had done extremely well, and the connection was completed one day ahead of the agreed date.

In the past the inhabitants of Quorn had derived their water supply from individual wells attached to, or in some cases inside their properties. Cases of fever were occasionally happening, and this drove the Quorn Local Board (QLB) to consider obtaining a public water supply. In the summer of 1889 typhoid fever had spread through the village and had not been reported to the medical officer as was legally required. The disease being attributed to poor sanitation and a lack of safe drinking water. At least 20 people were attacked, one young man and a baby died. The main outbreak where 11 people were affected was attributed to the Meat Supply Company where the water was found to be totally unfit for domestic use. Fever also occurred at 5 other premises where in each case the water was found to be polluted.

In the same year a Leicester Corporation Water Bill was in the process of being drafted to go to Parliament, but Quorn objected to this with the object of securing terms acceptable to the village. The QLB wished to see Quorn not only being included in the ‘limits of supply’ but that the works should be carried out by and at the expense of the Leicester Corporation. In the September of 1889 QLB attention had been drawn to the fact that the Leicester Corporation had been working on a plan to take water for the city’s ever increasing population from the Quorn Brook and in December that they intended to build a new reservoir within the Quorn boundary. Repeated cases of typhoid fever had focussed the boards attention on obtaining a public water supply for the last 2 or 3 years. The QLB had tried to communicate with the Corporation but without receiving a satisfactory response.

In an issue of the Leicester Chronicle it was suggested that:

‘‘The matter in dispute was a matter for a ‘round table conference’. Quorn admitted this last September, but with what result? All that Quorn want, and what the Local Board claim they are entitled to is a good and efficient water supply at the cheapest possible rate, and if Leicester had acted in a more conciliatory spirit this result might have been attained without all this unpleasantness. Is it reasonable to obtain the principal stream of another authority and obtain powers to pump the water to Bradgate, and for all practical purposes abstract the whole of the water from the stream without offering adequate provision on terms for the inhabitants of the district…’’

The board considered the Corporation to be ‘high handed’ and they, the QLB were in no way promoting a ‘dog in the manger’ approach. In March 1890 a deputation of members from the QLB consisting of Messrs Bolesworth, Richardson, and Wright plus Mr Beardsley (Solicitor to the Board), Mr Hodgson (Surveyor) and Mr White (Clerk) went to meet the Leicester Corporation. After what was said to be a ‘long conference’ mutually acceptable terms were agreed that would be included as clauses in the Bill.

Basically, Quorn came away proud (and rightly so) of the four main clauses that they wanted were agreed. The Corporation would supply the village of Quorndon with a water supply within 12 months at 4d per 1000 gallons. They would lay a 6-inch diameter main to Chaveney House on Woodhouse Road (now Chaveney Road) and provide a 6-inch Siemen’s meter. The QLB would be responsible for laying and maintaining all the distribution pipes and services past the meter. The Board also managed to obtain a payment of £250 towards their expenses!

The Heads of Agreement document was signed the next day. The mains entry point however, had to be changed from Chaveney House to the entrance to Quorn House after Lord Lanesborough had not agreed to the mains going across his land to link with the Bradgate Reservoir pumping station.

At the next board meeting the terms were formally agreed and were considered to be extremely satisfactory to the inhabitants of the parish with the local costs being recovered through the rates.

The Leicester Corporation Water Act of 1890 was passed into law and once the Swithland reservoir had been completed in 1896, the Quorn supply was connected directly to that and the temporary arrangements at Kinchley Hill were dismantled. The Quorn supply was later extended to serve Barrow upon Soar.

Submitted on: 2023-01-14 Submitted by: Dennis Marchant Artefact ID: 2519 Artefact URL: www.quornmuseum.com/display.php?id=2519