The British Empire at its peak was the largest in the history of the world, and the cornerstone of the Empire was foreign trade. Empire and trade fed off each other, as new colonies made available new resources and markets for British factories, and by the late 19th century Britain had an estimated quarter of all world trade. The prodigious production levels needed to fuel this trade were made possible by the new systems and technologies of the Industrial Revolution, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. As the first major nation to industrialize and use these new production systems, Britain gained a tremendous advantage in advancing both its Imperial and its commercial interests. In the process, many of its cities were changed irrevocably and sometimes unrecognizably, with vast demographic shifts and even topographical changes as canals were dug, rivers were shifted, or hills were mined.
Some of the cities most affected by the Industrial Revolution were those that became the industrial giants of Northern England in the 19th century, such as Sheffield, Manchester, Bradford, or Nottingham. However, despite its apparently disruptive effects on these urban centers, the Industrial Revolution was not wholly an external phenomenon that happened to them, nor a fundamental disruption of their existing order. Rather, it was a period of highly accelerated development, and its seeds had been sown centuries earlier as individual cities like these had began to specialize in certain industries and to export manufactured goods to mainland Europe or to other parts of Britain. Though seemingly sudden and even cataclysmic because of the allometric processes of industrial and urban growth, the Industrial Revolution actually flowed naturally out of the evolving systems of production that these cities had been developing over the course of centuries.
Cities like Sheffield, for example, which had long been famous for its knives and tableware, had developed a craft-oriented economy that passed knowledge and techniques from one generation to the next, slowly developing technologies and mass-production capabilities while maintaining links to resources like coal, iron ore, and distribution networks. Bradford, which in the 18th and 19th centuries became a phenomenon of urban and industrial expansion in the wool trades, had already been processing wool and textiles almost from the time of William the Conqueror. Through its long history this city had likewise honed its production methods, established channels for supplying itself with raw materials, and worked to develop markets for its products. It was the pre-existing industrial economies in cities like these that brought forth the inventors, technologies, transportation networks, and entrepreneurs that made the Industrial Revolution possible and even inevitable.
And what had sustained the early industrial economies of Northern England’s cities in prior centuries? In almost every case, it was rivers that had played the most vital roles—powering mills, transporting goods, and providing the water needed for industry. Centuries before steam power, it was their locations on waterways that allowed towns like Bradford (on the Bradford Beck), Sheffield (on the River Sheaf and Porter Brook), Manchester (on the River Medlock, River Irk, River Irwell, and the Gore Brook), or Birmingham (on the River Rea and the River Tame) to thrive and in some cases to even develop economies based on production of specific goods using water-powered, mechanized processes. These and many other river-rich towns in Northern England were ideal incubators of industrialism, and the success of that incubation was demonstrated by their explosive growth and economic success in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Successful cities build over their history, and these cities, which changed so radically in size and character during the course of the Industrial Revolution, did so in particularly obvious ways. In each of the cities mentioned above, all but the largest of the rivers are now underground. The Bradford Beck, the Sheaf, Porter Brook, the Medlock, Gore Brook, and the Irk—all of these waterways were at one time vital to the development of the cities through which they flow, and each is now partially or completely culverted within their respective cities. In cities throughout England, and particularly Northern England, similar sites exist. London, for example, has over a dozen named watercourses that were once significant to the developing city but that now are integrated into the sewer system and completely invisible from the surface.
Though underground, and usually unseen, the changed role of these watercourses does not mean that they no longer offer insight into the cities they run through. On the contrary, they can offer a connection to the early days of a city, because often the small, polluted urban waterways that are likely to be culverted in a large city are the same small and centrally-located streams that would have been most useful to the early settlement that was the predecessor of the city. Moreover, the process by which a river was culverted or integrated into a sewer system not only tells about that particular period in the city’s history, but it also strongly reflects changes and developments the city underwent between the time that the watercourse was a useful resource above-ground, and when it was relegated to the underground. The growth of Sheffield from a small village of artisanal knife-makers to a water-powered metalworking town, for example, was reflected in the Porter Brook’s complete diversion into a series of millraces and millponds by the 18th century, and Sheffield’s shift away from water-power and its continued growth in the 19th century is reflected in the culvert, which functions as a city storm drain, that encloses the Porter Brook today.
On a recent trip to England, I set out to find some of these disappeared watercourses and to see what they could tell me about the history of the cities under which they now ran. In cold November weather, I took off from London with two companions: Chris, an Australian computer programmer and photographer, and John, a Londoner who divides his time between his work as an arborist and his hobby of researching London’s sewers. We had three goals: Nottingham, to find the remnants of a small stream once known as the Beck Burn; Sheffield, to find the River Sheaf; and Bradford, for the Bradford Beck. John woke us up at five o’clock a.m., and Chris and I piled into his little two-door sports car amidst piles of rubber boots, helmets, winter jackets, tripods, cameras, and headlamps.
Showing posts with label NOTTINGHAM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NOTTINGHAM. Show all posts
NOTTINGHAM #1: NOTTINGHAM BACKGROUND AND THE BECK BURN
The first stop was Nottingham, where our goal was to walk underground through the 19th-century Beck Valley Storm Water Culvert, a drainage tunnel that follows the old course of a stream called the Beck or the Beck Burn. It was the smallest of the watercourses we would visit, but I was still excited to see a stream from which Robin Hood himself might have drunk. If the locals knew we were walking through their city’s drains, I wondered, stealing from Nottingham’s rich past to share with the present, would they consider us heroes or thieves?
In Robin Hood’s time—around the 13th century AD—and for centuries after, the Beck had been a clear and sparkling brook that ran through Sneinton, an area of pastures and fields just east of Nottingham’s gates. Unlike the eponymous watercourses we would later visit in Sheffield and Bradford (the River Sheaf and the Bradford Beck), the Beck Burn was never central to Nottingham and probably was not used to drive waterwheels for power. Up until about the 17th century, it was literally peripheral, running just outside of Nottingham’s eastern edge and flowing south into the River Leen, which was effectively the town’s southern border.
Rather, its importance as an incubator of urban development lay in its value as one of several watercourses that richly supplied the region with irrigation, washing water, and drinking water for people and livestock. The springs that supplied it were on the north side of town, and with the Leen on the south this gave the town freshwater sources on three sides. Charles Deering, an historian of the town who lived and wrote in the 18th century, pointed out that the Beck Burn was invaluable as a source of water for the luxuriant corn and hay fields to the north, as well as the cattle pastured both north and east of the town. After enumerating the other advantages of the site—the navigable Trent River less than a mile to the south, and the closeness of the famous Sherwood forest—Deering asks rhetorically: “Thus were a Naturalist in Quest of an exquisite Spot to built a Town or City upon, could he meet with one that would better Answer his Wishes?”
The Beck’s primary source was St. Ann’s Well, a spring that was located north of town at the end of what is now St. Ann’s Well Road. Another unnamed spring fed into the stream between St. Ann’s Well and the town. The stream originally flowed into the Leen River, which in turn flowed into the larger Trent River. The Trent River, as well as the Nottingham Canal of the late 18th century, provided transport routes that helped Nottingham develop into the central market town of the region. The Trent is not much changed from its old course, but the Leen disappeared when its water was redirected into the canal. The Beck Valley Culvert now flows directly into the Trent, well south of the town’s boundaries in the middle ages.
In Robin Hood’s time—around the 13th century AD—and for centuries after, the Beck had been a clear and sparkling brook that ran through Sneinton, an area of pastures and fields just east of Nottingham’s gates. Unlike the eponymous watercourses we would later visit in Sheffield and Bradford (the River Sheaf and the Bradford Beck), the Beck Burn was never central to Nottingham and probably was not used to drive waterwheels for power. Up until about the 17th century, it was literally peripheral, running just outside of Nottingham’s eastern edge and flowing south into the River Leen, which was effectively the town’s southern border.
Rather, its importance as an incubator of urban development lay in its value as one of several watercourses that richly supplied the region with irrigation, washing water, and drinking water for people and livestock. The springs that supplied it were on the north side of town, and with the Leen on the south this gave the town freshwater sources on three sides. Charles Deering, an historian of the town who lived and wrote in the 18th century, pointed out that the Beck Burn was invaluable as a source of water for the luxuriant corn and hay fields to the north, as well as the cattle pastured both north and east of the town. After enumerating the other advantages of the site—the navigable Trent River less than a mile to the south, and the closeness of the famous Sherwood forest—Deering asks rhetorically: “Thus were a Naturalist in Quest of an exquisite Spot to built a Town or City upon, could he meet with one that would better Answer his Wishes?”
The Beck’s primary source was St. Ann’s Well, a spring that was located north of town at the end of what is now St. Ann’s Well Road. Another unnamed spring fed into the stream between St. Ann’s Well and the town. The stream originally flowed into the Leen River, which in turn flowed into the larger Trent River. The Trent River, as well as the Nottingham Canal of the late 18th century, provided transport routes that helped Nottingham develop into the central market town of the region. The Trent is not much changed from its old course, but the Leen disappeared when its water was redirected into the canal. The Beck Valley Culvert now flows directly into the Trent, well south of the town’s boundaries in the middle ages.
NOTTINGHAM: INTO THE BECK
Comparing 19th-century maps with contemporary ones, we found the outfall of the culvert along the northern shore of the Trent River. We let ourselves down the bank and into the river, and stepped into the twelve-foot-wide, eight-foot high brick tunnel.
The sunlight disappeared almost instantly as we waded in. The water was waist deep; it was cold and dirty, and I was very glad to be wearing chest-high waders. Chris and John were only wearing hip waders and they tried to keep to the curving, shallower sides of the channel. I stayed in the center where the water was higher, but the flat bottom gave a better footing. I jumped and almost fell when I felt something moving touch my leg. Chris saw me. “Fish,” he said. “They’ve been bumping into my legs. Is that what you felt?”
A stone plaque above the intricate brickwork of the outfall had told us it had been built in 1884, and gave us Nottingham’s Latin motto—“Vivit Post Funera Virtus,” or “Virtue Outlives Death.” The tunnel had been built with care and pride, and a measure of that is the fact that the grade is still even, with no sinkage or buckling of the floor. As the tunnel slowly sloped upward, the water became shallower, until it was just an ankle-high fast-moving stream coursing down the center of the tunnel. Occasionally, we passed openings to smaller brick tunnels. From its inception, the culvert had been intended to carry storm water—but as with almost all older storm water drains, it would also carry any overflow from the sewage system. The lower half of the tunnel openings we passed were blocked with a dam. As long as the sewage didn’t rise above the dam it stayed out of the culvert, but if it rose too high then the excess would flow over the barrier and into this tunnel.
After about a half-mile of walking, the tunnel turned perfectly round, a brick tube maybe twelve feet in diameter, which would slowly shrink as we went further upstream. Dark, glassy bricks lined the bottom third of the tunnel to resist the punishing flow of water. Higher up, the bricks were lighter in color and looked much more like standard building bricks. All of the brickwork was still immaculate, despite being over a century old. The vitreous bricks underfoot were wet and incredibly slippery, and I fell once with a noise that echoed through the tunnel.
The sunlight disappeared almost instantly as we waded in. The water was waist deep; it was cold and dirty, and I was very glad to be wearing chest-high waders. Chris and John were only wearing hip waders and they tried to keep to the curving, shallower sides of the channel. I stayed in the center where the water was higher, but the flat bottom gave a better footing. I jumped and almost fell when I felt something moving touch my leg. Chris saw me. “Fish,” he said. “They’ve been bumping into my legs. Is that what you felt?”
A stone plaque above the intricate brickwork of the outfall had told us it had been built in 1884, and gave us Nottingham’s Latin motto—“Vivit Post Funera Virtus,” or “Virtue Outlives Death.” The tunnel had been built with care and pride, and a measure of that is the fact that the grade is still even, with no sinkage or buckling of the floor. As the tunnel slowly sloped upward, the water became shallower, until it was just an ankle-high fast-moving stream coursing down the center of the tunnel. Occasionally, we passed openings to smaller brick tunnels. From its inception, the culvert had been intended to carry storm water—but as with almost all older storm water drains, it would also carry any overflow from the sewage system. The lower half of the tunnel openings we passed were blocked with a dam. As long as the sewage didn’t rise above the dam it stayed out of the culvert, but if it rose too high then the excess would flow over the barrier and into this tunnel.
After about a half-mile of walking, the tunnel turned perfectly round, a brick tube maybe twelve feet in diameter, which would slowly shrink as we went further upstream. Dark, glassy bricks lined the bottom third of the tunnel to resist the punishing flow of water. Higher up, the bricks were lighter in color and looked much more like standard building bricks. All of the brickwork was still immaculate, despite being over a century old. The vitreous bricks underfoot were wet and incredibly slippery, and I fell once with a noise that echoed through the tunnel.
NOTTINGHAM: ST. ANN’S WELL AND SEWERAGE
St. Ann’s Well itself was a much-loved site. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was about a mile from the town limits, which helped the water stay clean. Writing in 1641, a local historian described it:
This Well is all Summer long much frequented, and there are but few fair Days between March and October, in which some Company or other of the Town….use not to fetch a walk to this Well, either to dine or sup, or both…. and when any of the Town have their Friends come to them, they have given them no welcome, unless they entertain them at this Well.
By the 18th century, the spring was protected by a hut with stone walls and a tiled roof. Though it was officially named after a nearby chapel dedicated to St. Ann, the well was also known as Robin Hood’s Well. The Public House next to the well had its own attractions for fans of the famous outlaw: “Robin Hood’s Chair,” a battered wicker chair that visitors could sit in, along with a hat and a bow that the owners of the Public House “affirm[ed] to have been the famous Robber’s Property.”
Though St. Ann’s Well was a well-loved attraction, the stream from it became more and more polluted with sewage as the city grew. Records show that the city had maintained the Beck’s channel as far back as the 15th century, hiring laborers at three pennies a day to clean out the refuse that collected in the ditch. After nearly four centuries of maintaining it this way, it was roofed over for the first time sometime between 1833 and 1872. But heavy rain could cause the small ditch to back up and flood the road next to it, and the undrained sewage exacerbated the repeated outbreaks of cholera in the 19th century.
In 1872, a Sewerage Board was created to deal with the sanitation issues plaguing the city. “As various sewers in the area were at that time discharging their contents direct into these rivers and other water-courses,” explained one of Nottingham’s city engineers, “the necessity for the formation of the Board will be readily understood.” Among their tasks was to build a new, larger culvert for the Beck.
It was this 19th century culvert through which we walked now. The engineers had done their job well. Though the final years of the 19th century were still plagued by terrible labor conditions and disease outbreaks throughout Northern England’s industrial towns, urban sewerage and water supply engineering like this tunnel were the foundation of a hugely important fifty-year decline in mortality rates, which had begun with the passage of England’s first Public Health Act in 1848. By effectively draining sewage from Nottingham, this tunnel we were in had, without any exaggeration, saved thousands of lives that would have otherwise been lost to water-borne diseases. Virtue outlives death, indeed.
We didn’t get all the way to the original St. Ann’s Well. The tunnel shrank until we had to walk in a crouch, and then shrank more until we had to crawl. I think we were about a half-mile from the original source when we were forced to turn around.
Looking at surface maps and tracing our route, we found that we had walked and waded for about two miles through the tunnel. Originally the entire stream hadn’t been over a mile and a half long, but re-routing the outfall to the Trent when the Leen was diverted had almost doubled the length of the Beck Burn.
We came out of the tunnel in the middle of Nottingham, through a rusty hatchway in the sidewalk between a busy roadway and a church that had been (accidentally) constructed over the culvert tunnel in the late 1890s. Somehow the church architects had forgotten about the Beck Burn’s tunnel (even though the Beck Burn’s nearness was the reason, in 1833, that the church had purchased the site as an additional graveyard for Cholera victims). An emergency system of iron braces—essentially a cage around the tunnel—was laid into the ground to support the weight of the stone church over the stream’s culvert.
I thought the Church’s construction stood as a good example of why it’s important for a city to remember what lies beneath the surface. But as we crawled out of the ground, wet and dirty as we emerged next to a busy road, the utterly baffled looks we got from the people who saw us suggested that few, if any, knew they were passing over one of the once-pellucid streams that had nurtured the town in its very earliest days.
This Well is all Summer long much frequented, and there are but few fair Days between March and October, in which some Company or other of the Town….use not to fetch a walk to this Well, either to dine or sup, or both…. and when any of the Town have their Friends come to them, they have given them no welcome, unless they entertain them at this Well.
By the 18th century, the spring was protected by a hut with stone walls and a tiled roof. Though it was officially named after a nearby chapel dedicated to St. Ann, the well was also known as Robin Hood’s Well. The Public House next to the well had its own attractions for fans of the famous outlaw: “Robin Hood’s Chair,” a battered wicker chair that visitors could sit in, along with a hat and a bow that the owners of the Public House “affirm[ed] to have been the famous Robber’s Property.”
Though St. Ann’s Well was a well-loved attraction, the stream from it became more and more polluted with sewage as the city grew. Records show that the city had maintained the Beck’s channel as far back as the 15th century, hiring laborers at three pennies a day to clean out the refuse that collected in the ditch. After nearly four centuries of maintaining it this way, it was roofed over for the first time sometime between 1833 and 1872. But heavy rain could cause the small ditch to back up and flood the road next to it, and the undrained sewage exacerbated the repeated outbreaks of cholera in the 19th century.
In 1872, a Sewerage Board was created to deal with the sanitation issues plaguing the city. “As various sewers in the area were at that time discharging their contents direct into these rivers and other water-courses,” explained one of Nottingham’s city engineers, “the necessity for the formation of the Board will be readily understood.” Among their tasks was to build a new, larger culvert for the Beck.
It was this 19th century culvert through which we walked now. The engineers had done their job well. Though the final years of the 19th century were still plagued by terrible labor conditions and disease outbreaks throughout Northern England’s industrial towns, urban sewerage and water supply engineering like this tunnel were the foundation of a hugely important fifty-year decline in mortality rates, which had begun with the passage of England’s first Public Health Act in 1848. By effectively draining sewage from Nottingham, this tunnel we were in had, without any exaggeration, saved thousands of lives that would have otherwise been lost to water-borne diseases. Virtue outlives death, indeed.
We didn’t get all the way to the original St. Ann’s Well. The tunnel shrank until we had to walk in a crouch, and then shrank more until we had to crawl. I think we were about a half-mile from the original source when we were forced to turn around.
Looking at surface maps and tracing our route, we found that we had walked and waded for about two miles through the tunnel. Originally the entire stream hadn’t been over a mile and a half long, but re-routing the outfall to the Trent when the Leen was diverted had almost doubled the length of the Beck Burn.
We came out of the tunnel in the middle of Nottingham, through a rusty hatchway in the sidewalk between a busy roadway and a church that had been (accidentally) constructed over the culvert tunnel in the late 1890s. Somehow the church architects had forgotten about the Beck Burn’s tunnel (even though the Beck Burn’s nearness was the reason, in 1833, that the church had purchased the site as an additional graveyard for Cholera victims). An emergency system of iron braces—essentially a cage around the tunnel—was laid into the ground to support the weight of the stone church over the stream’s culvert.
I thought the Church’s construction stood as a good example of why it’s important for a city to remember what lies beneath the surface. But as we crawled out of the ground, wet and dirty as we emerged next to a busy road, the utterly baffled looks we got from the people who saw us suggested that few, if any, knew they were passing over one of the once-pellucid streams that had nurtured the town in its very earliest days.
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