Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough -
Woldingham
This is the twelfth in our series of caches placed close to or
associated with drinking fountains or animal troughs. The cache is
located on Woldingham Green, close to an example of a Metropolitan
Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association drinking fountain
and also close to a trough which was ‘erected by the
inhabitants of Woldingham’.
The Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association
was an association set up in London by Samuel Gurney an MP and
philanthropist and Edward Thomas Wakefield, a barrister in 1859 to
provide free drinking water. Originally called the Metropolitan
Free Drinking Fountain Association it changed its name to include
cattle troughs in 1867, to also support animal welfare.
Water provision in the nineteenth century was from nine private
water companies each with a geographic monopoly, which provided
inadequate quantities of water which was often contaminated, as was
famously discovered by John Snow during the 1854 cholera epidemic.
Population growth in London had been very rapid (more than doubling
between 1800 and 1850) without an increase in infrastructure
investment. Legislation in the mid nineteenth century gradually
improved the situation; the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers was
informed, water filtration was made compulsory, and water intakes
on the Thames were forced to be moved above the sewage
outlets.
In this environment the public drinking fountain movement began,
initially in Liverpool where the local government was granted the
ability to buy out the private water companies in 1847. It built
the first public baths and then encouraged philanthropic public
drinking water fountains.
A = Number of letters in 2nd line of drinking fountain
B = Number of letters in 3rd line of drinking fountain
C = Number of letters in 5th line of drinking fountain
DE = DE Victoria Street
FGHI = Trough erected in August FGHI
N 51 FI.HFI
W 000 (H)(G-I). (F)(B)(A-C)
Please bring your own pencil
If any body would
like to expand to this series please do, I would just ask that you
could let Merstham Mafia know first so that they can keep track of
the cache numbers and names to avoid duplication