Water supply and sewerage for railway stations

[Tony Whittaker]

Railway stations and other facilities needed a ready supply of water, not only for water columns but cleaning activities and public toilets. How did this fit in with waste water and sewage disposal. For instance, a case in point:
Chinley new station (1902) had its own water supply from a water course for the station and refreshment rooms. At this time, there was no mains water supply to the village, which would take several more years to arrive. However, there was a drainage system available, because the Midland Railway got into trouble for not paying the charge for drainage from their new turntable pit. Yet they presumably had waste water requirements across the site, including rain water and toilets. So these were presumably draining away through this same drainage system to the nearest river in the valley from 1902. Yet a true sewage system was not installed in the village in 1912.
The natural assumption would be that when only a few locations such as stations and hotels, had their own supply of water and flush toilets, they were just sending waste water and sewage down the road drains to the nearest water large water course, and this was seen as an acceptable load. But once mains water reached the village, people would start installing flush toilets and sending much more foul water down drains, and the pressure to have sewage treatment became urgent. Once it became available, householders and larger users were required to switch to it. Is this a correct understanding of the situation? Thanks for any wisdom.

 

[John Webb]

Sewage disposal could be via cess-pits, emptied out from time to time.

 

[The exile]

Rainwater probably just went into soakaways from downpipes. Very little of the ground surface would have been truly sealed so except in cloudbursts surface water would have been far less of a problem that it can be today.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Septic tanks were well established for ‘foul water’ quite a few years before Chinley station was enlarged.

I suspect that the turntable water was a problem because of oil contamination, not toilet waste.

 

[stuving]

The Public Health Act 1848 set up the legal framework for drainage and water supply. That was about bringing at least a basic form of the kind of sanitary arrangements already in place for better housing to the crowded lower-class housing on towns and cities. Rural areas had more space to cope with effluent and provide sources to fetch water from.

Following 1848 further acts, and expectations of cleaning up effluent before discharging it to watercourses, led to more extensive engineering of drainage systems. Piped water to houses came a bit later in most cases. What follows is based on a quick look at what are I'm sure some of the same sources as Tony's.

Chapel-en-le-Frith RDC in the Peak (with Chinley in it) is quite hilly, which dictates how drains work and where streams and springs can be found. The main drainage scheme didn't start until after 1890, and built a sewage farm on the Black Brook between Chinley and Chapel (where it still is). That's upstream of Chinley village, so I guess some parts nearest the brook could not drain to it.

The 1899 map shows several troughs and wells along the roads, with livestock being an important consideration. Water supply was from a lot of local and private sources, and work on a larger mains supply started after 1900. This involved agreeing for the springs and streams previously used locally to be attached to th mains. They also started to build a waterworks with reservoir (at Shireoaks, I think).

That sewer that the MR agreed - and then didn't - to pay to use for their turntable was described as "and old stone sewer belonging to the Council". If that predates the new sewage farm, presumably it led to the Black Brook with little or no treatment. With several mills along the Black Brook that was probably acceptable.

Reports of the sanitary committee from before 1890 list a lot of minor works to be done to link closets to the drains, add traps where they had none, and clean up effluents. Presumably there were a lot of small-scale treatment systems, some more effective than others. In other words I don't think it was a matter of sewage treatment versus none before the new works, more an evolution in size and effectiveness. It all ended up in the Black Brook in any case.

 

[ThirteenArches]

The simple fact is that almost all houses and pubs, and sometimes even quite large hotels, seldom had sewage connections right into the 20th century. Cess pits, or straight out into a convenient stream or river if one happened to be close.

But once mains water reached the village, people would start installing flush toilets and sending much more foul water down drains, and the pressure to have sewage treatment became urgent.

In one village I know of, water mains were installed in the 1870s, and flush toilets in the school and the more affluent houses, but sewers didn't arrive till the 1930s. The little trickle of a brook had to take the lot. Must have been fun in a drought.