| Description | [There is one early reference to waterworks in Reading, at Yield Hall in 1515 [for which see R/AT3/25/2], and in 1570 Queen Elizabeth I appointed Commissioners to enquire into water supply and sewage in Reading [see R/Z1/4].
However, Reading Waterworks and Reading Water Works Company more clearly trace their origin to a private enterprise which started in 1696, when a group of ironmongers and gentlemen (who presumably financed the project) from Worcestershire leased a small plot of land near the Shambles at a place called Browne's Hill [in Broad Street], for 1000 years, from Reading Borough, subject to a covenant to build and maintain cisterns, buildings and an engine or waterworks to supply water for domestic use at reasonable rates, excluding only times of repair of the waterworks, great floods, shortage of water, and great frosts. In 1697 they acquired a similar parcel of land adjoining the River Kennet and St Giles's Mills, with a licence to erect buildings, wheels, pipes, engines and instruments to supply water from the river to cisterns in Reading, and to lay pipes under and across the river and Mill Lane to London Street and Horn Street. The watermill or engine near St Giles's Mills supplied the whole of the town of Reading with water until c.1820. The company also built Whitley Reservoir or Tank (used until 1908)and a water tower in Mill Lane (used until 1901). It was incorporated in 1826.
By 1809 the works had fallen into some disrepair. In 1851 an Act of Parliament authorised the expansion of the waterworks and at around this time new premises were constructed in Bath Road, Reading. Under the Reading Local Board Waterworks, Sewerage, Drainage and Improvement Act 1870 the waterworks were taken over by Reading Borough in its guise as the Local Board of Health (later acting as Reading Urban Sanitary Authority). Under the Reading Water Order, 1899, Reading Corporation was authorised to act in Pangbourne and Tilehurst. A new water tower was built in Calcot, Tilehurst.
By 1947 the Reading Borough Council Water Department supplied water to Reading; the parishes of Purley, Sulham, Tidmarsh and Tilehurst; parts of the parishes of Burghfield, Earley, Englefield, Pangbourne, Theale, all in Berkshire, and Eye and Dunsden and Whitchurch, Oxfordshire. In that year it took over responsibility for water supply from the areas previously served by the following: Maidenhead Waterworks Company, part of Newbury Corporation, Wallingford Corporation, Wallingford Rural District Council, part of Wantage Rural District Council, Wokingham Rural District Council, part of Mid-Wessex Water Company, Henley on Thames Water Company, and South Oxfordshire Water & Gas Company.
The waterworks were subsequently transferrred to Thames Water.] |
| Related Material | For deeds of the waterworks, 1696-1861, see R/AT7/25, 39 and D/TC189. For plan of the premises at St Giles Mill, see R/D203/7/3/5.
For Reading Water Supply Act 1826, see D/EX1130/1/9. For Act to alter and enlarge the powers of the Reading Waterworks Company, 1851, see Q/RUO1/12.
For plans relating to Reading Water Works, 1846-1867, see Q/RUM78, 88, 126. For annual statements of accounts (incomplete), 1851-1859, see Q/RUA1/11-17, and for 1879/80 see D/EX1942/7/2/6.
For minutes of committee appointed pursuant to s.5 of the Reading Local Board Waterworks, Sewerage, Drainage and Improvement Act 1870, March 1873-October 1876, see R/AS2/2/11. For Special Committee appointed in reference to the conduct of the legal business connected with the carrying into execution of the powers and provisions of the Reading Local Board Waterworks, Sewerage, Drainage and Improvement Act 1870, 1873, see R/AT2/9/1. For Reading Borough Waterworks Committee, 1875-1881, see R/AC2/22/1.
For various posters, 1809-1838, see D/EX1564/1. For press cuttings album of Leslie Charles Walker of Reading, waterworks manager, 1892-1921, see D/EX1540/1. For photographs of waterworks buildings taken for the Reading Borough Water Engineer and Manager, 1946-1948, see D/EX2162/1-7. |