The New River – Bringing fresh water to London

You can also watch my video about the New River on The History of London YouTube channel by clicking here.

During the Middle Ages the people of London relied on rivers, springs, conduits and public fountains for their water. In 1582 the Dutch engineer Peter Morice established an ingenious mechanism at London Bridge. It pumped river water into a system supplying premises in the immediate area to the north of the bridge. However, this only worked at high tide and provided water for a limited area.

About twenty years later one Captain Edmund Colthurst devised a plan to bring fresh water from springs in Hertfordshire to London by means of a six-feet wide channel. Queen Elizabeth gave her provisional consent but died before a charter could be issued. King James provided the necessary approval in 1604 and work began on Colthurst’s ‘river’. His route was to be through Broxbourne, Wormley, Cheshunt, Theobalds Park and Edmonton, down to Islington.

Hugh Middelton

Three miles had been completed when the City of London Corporation started to take an interest in the advantages of the scheme. An alternative plan was drawn up for a wider channel but most likely along the same route. They ensured that an Act of Parliament was passed, effectively over-ruling the King’s Letter Patent of Colthurst’s scheme. In 1609 the Common Council of the City announced it had accepted the new plan by one of their inner-circle, Hugh Myddelton, to complete the work based on their Act.

Myddelton was the son of the governor of Denbigh Castle in Wales and derived his fortune from mines in Cardiganshire. More importantly in this respect, he was a member of London’s Goldsmiths’ Company. He raised money for the initial work by issuing thirty-six shares, some sold for £100 each and some kept by Myddelton himself. Clearly his scheme relied heavily on that of Colthurst who was given four shares and a salary in compensation.

Work recommenced in 1609. Myddelton’s scheme was a massive and cleverly calculated undertaking for the time. Ten feet wide, and with a water depth of four feet, it gently sloped five and a half metres over its 60-kilometre journey, or just five inches every mile, allowing the contents to flow from Chadwell and Amwell near Ware in Hertfordshire at exactly the correct speed and volume.

Work suddenly ground to a halt when owners of land through which the channel had to pass objected to Parliament, which King James (for bigger political reasons) subsequently dissolved, leaving the matter unresolved. Myddelton’s solution was to approach the King who, perhaps seeing the potential for a scheme that was for the general good, but also one from which he could personally gain, agreed to fund half the cost in return for half the profit. It was Myddelton’s masterstroke. Not only had he raised further finance but now had a backer against whom no landowner dare complain. Indeed, the King commanded that no-one should object to the work “…upon paine of his majesties highe displeasure…”. Work resumed in early 1612 and by that summer as many as 300 men were employed on the undertaking.

An illustration, produced in 1800, of the New River opening ceremony.

Myddelton’s plan was to end his ‘New River’ at Sadler’s Wells, just below the summit of Islington Hill, where an old duck pond was enlarged to become a reservoir, to be known as ‘New River Head’. There the ‘Water House’ was built, housing a workman controlling the flow of water into pipes, as well as being where money could be paid by customers who received their supply.

Construction of the waterway was completed in September 1613, with an opening ceremony at New River Head attended by the Lord Mayor of London and many of the City aldermen, together with Myddelton’s brother Thomas (who that same day was named the next Lord Mayor). A speech was given that ended with:

Now for the fruits then; flow forth precious spring
So long and dearly sought for, and now bring
Comfort to all that love thee; loudly sing,
And with thy chrystal murmurs strook together,
Bid all thy true well-wishers welcome hither.

At that point the flood-gates were opened and “the streame ranne gallantly into the cistrene drummes and trumpets sounding in triumphall manner, and the brave peal of chambers [cannons] gave full issue”.

The top of Islington Hill, roughly where you will find the Angel tube station these days, then overlooked London below, across open meadows. The reservoir was located a short way down the hill, between what is now the Angel and Sadler’s Well’s Theatre.

A system of pipes made from hollowed-out elm trees began to be constructed to take supplies from the reservoir, across the meadows and down through the streets of London. Each tree trunk was joined to the next by carving the end into a point that then fitted into a tapered hole in the next trunk. It was not the ideal system because the joints leaked, and the tree-trunks lasted only a few years before rotting away, requiring frequent replacement. The leaky joints also prevented pressurisation and wherever the route took it across low-lying ground the mains pipes had to be built up on trestles to create a gentle downward gradient. Pipes were laid underground within the city streets. London’s terrible congestion meant that it was impossible for work to be carried out during the day, so it was undertaken at night by candle and torchlight.

The first main pipe travelled as far as Smithfield and Newgate, then branched east to Cheapside and Aldgate and west to Temple Bar and Fleet Street. Smaller pipes branched off the main pipes. By the end of 1618 around 1,500 premises were connected and soon the entire City of London was covered except for the area already supplied by the competing waterworks at London Bridge.

The problem of leakage meant that the pipes could not be left permanently filled. A system of stopcocks controlled the flow, with each area supplied for an hour or two several times each week. Premises connected to the pipe network had their own water tanks that filled when water was flowing. Any premises that wanted to buy New River water was required to install a thin lead ‘quill’ up to the main supply to which the New River Company would solder a brass ferrule to be inserted into their pipe. Each building paid an initial fee (normally of £1 but up to £25 for owners of larger trade premises) and thereafter a quarterly ‘fine’ depending on the type of establishment.

Various people had put money into the enterprise but it still remained the property of Hugh Myddelton, which was far from satisfactory from the point of view of its biggest investor, King James. Therefore in 1619 the King issued letters patent that converted it into a new legal entity known as ‘The Governor and Company of the New River’, with Myddelton as its first Governor and a specified number of elected officers. At the same time the King took the opportunity to slip into the founding charter a clause giving the company an effective monopoly of the supply of any new water supplies into London and Westminster. That privilege had never been granted in the original Act of Parliament but by 1619 James was the biggest shareholder so he was cleverly protecting his own investment without having to argue the case with a dissolved Parliament. The shareholding in the company was inherited by James’s son, Charles I, who sold his part in 1631.

Later in the 17^th century the New River’s network was extended to supply Covent Garden and as far as Piccadilly, St. James’s, and Whitehall. By the time water arrived at the Round Pond reservoir it was half-way down Islington Hill. That was sufficient for water to flow downhill from there to customers in the nearby City but lack of pressure provided only a trickle of water to the new suburbs to the west. As a solution, the water engineer George Sorocold built a windmill to pump water up to a reservoir further up the hill, providing a steeper gradient for those more distant districts. The mill was only partially successful and replaced by an improved structure in 1720. That in turn was succeeded by an early coal-powered engine in 1768.

Over the centuries water continued to flow along the New River from Hertfordshire to Islington. New River Head became a favourite place for Londoners to take a walk, a pleasant spot from where they could gaze down over the entire metropolis, from Mile End in the east to Westminster in the west and Southwark in the south. It was most probably in 1665 that the artist and engraver Wenceslaus Hollar escaped to Islington from the plague-ridden London and whilst there sketched evocative pictures of New River Head. In around 1750 the Venetian artist Canaletto sat on Islington Hill to take in the incredible panorama and produce one of his celebrated London views, with the New River reservoirs in the foreground.

Robert Mylne (1733-1811)

In 1759 a competition was held to design a new bridge over the Thames at Blackfriars. All the famous architects of the time submitted plans but against the odds the chosen entry was by an unknown Scottish design student. His name was Robert Mylne. Propelled to fame by London’s new bridge, he went on to become a successor to Sir Christopher Wren as Surveyor to St. Paul’s Cathedral (during which time he arranged Nelson’s funeral). Mylne also had a career as the engineer of various canals and harbours, and the first of a family dynasty of engineers to the New River Company.

The company required a continuous supply of elm to replace rotten sections and to extend its system as London expanded. These elm trunks were brought by boat along the Thames and landed at the company’s wharf near Blackfriars (now the site of the City of London School). On Christmas Eve 1769 the premises burnt down and Mylne’s first project for the company was to replace them with a new complex of fine offices, workshops and stables. He continued as the company’s engineer until the age of seventy-seven, a few months before his death at his home at Water House, New River Head. Amazingly, much of London’s water supply flowed through his basement!

When the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots took place in July 1780 it was thought the rioters planned to set the Bank of England alight and breach the New River to hinder the fire fighting. Troops were therefore stationed at New River Head and other vulnerable parts of the system, such as wooden aqueducts at Highbury and Bush Hill, Enfield.

Such was Robert Mylne’s dedication to his work for the New River that he named his second son after one of its sources, at Chadwell. That son, William Chadwell Mylne, was to play a significant role at the New River Company. As London and its population grew during the early 19^th century, as well as the demand for the New River Company’s water, William recommended to the company’s board the creation of two holding reservoirs beside the channel, north of the village of Stoke Newington. They were created between 1830 and 1833. London Bridge was being rebuilt at the same time to replace the medieval bridge, whose houses had been removed in 1750. Mylne used wood from the old bridge to line the reservoirs at Stoke Newington to protect the reservoir’s banks.

When it was first created, the channel followed the contours of the land through where it passed so that it remained on a slow decline from Hertfordshire to Islington. That created many loops and an original length of at least 42 miles. Shortening the length, and therefore reducing the cost of maintenance, began as early as 1618 and continued over the following decades through the construction of tunnels and embankments and by taking sections through pipes.

The pumping-house and filter beds at Stoke Newington in 1856.

In the 19th century London was plagued by outbreaks of cholera, and in 1849 John Snow, a doctor in Soho, proposed that the disease was being transmitted through contaminated water. The Metropolis Water Act of 1852 then stipulated that all water supplies brought by open aqueducts must be cleansed by filtering, and supply channels within five miles of St. Paul’s Cathedral were to be covered. That affected the New River in two ways. First, the previously open channel had to be covered for its final section into London, and secondly the water must be cleansed. Mylne recommended the creation of cleansing filter beds close to the Stoke Newington reservoirs and an engine-house to pump the filtered water through an underground iron pipe to a new covered reservoir at Claremont Square at Pentonville.

The reservoir at Claremont Square during construction, prior to being covered.

The pumping-house at Stoke Newington was designed by Robert Billings under the supervision of Mylne, and inspired by Stirling Castle in Scotland. Drawings of it were exhibited at the Society of British Artists in 1856. The building still exists. It may seem a fanciful work but almost everything other than the battlements had a practical purpose. The main tower was a chimney, with others containing an iron standpipe and spiral staircases that gave access to the enormous engines. The buttresses are not structural but are hollow and contained the huge flywheels of six Boulton & Watt beam engines, each 25 feet in diameter, weighing 35 tons, powered by 18 boilers and producing 200 horsepower. They were so large that the building was erected around them. The buttresses are adorned with the monograms ‘MYLNE 1855’.

The Metropolitan Water Board head office, built on the site of the Round Pond. It has now been converted into apartments but still contains the former board room of the New River Company.

After 400 years the New River continues to supply a significant amount of London’s water supply. The New River Company existed until 1904 when it was taken over by the Metropolitan Water Board. The Round Pond at New River Head continued in use until the early 20^th century when it was filled in. The Metropolitan Water Board built a headquarters building on the site, later joined by a testing laboratory. However, the nearby reservoir at Claremont Square, bordered by the busy Pentonville Road along one side, remains part of Thames Water’s water storage facilities.

During the Second World War the pumping-house and reservoirs at Stoke Newington, which were still part of the water-supply system for London, were targets for German bombers. Luckily, they never scored a direct hit, but great damage was done to the surrounding areas, where council flats were built after the war. One reservoir is now used for sailing and canoeing and the other a protected nature reserve.

By 1942 the pumping-house had become redundant. When the massive steam-engines were scrapped in 1952 they had to be cut into pieces to get them out of the building. The building itself was listed as Grade II* in 1972, much to the annoyance of its then owners, the Metropolitan Water Board, who learnt about it in The Times newspaper. In 1995 the inside space was converted for use as a climbing centre and is now one of the most popular in London, known as ‘The Castle’.

The New River in 1819, with Colebrooke Row on the right and Duncan Terrace on the left. What was then the open channel is now a linear park.

The section of the New River south from the Stoke Newington reservoirs was taken underground in the mid-19^th century. In 1946 it was truncated at Stoke Newington, with its water diverted from there into the modern water system.

There are still intriguing traces of the old route of the New River between Stoke Newington and New River Head at ground level. The long, straight Petherton Road is a dual carriageway, the two sides of the street now separated by a wide central, linear garden, which was previously the ground-level route of the New River.

The base of the unsuccessful early-18th century windmill built to raise water to an upper pond, still standing in a yard off Amwell Street in Islington.

It is a similar situation at Colebrooke Row. Here, though, the terrace of houses on the opposite side of the channel was built later than Colebrooke Row and given the separate name of Duncan Terrace. The poet Charles Lamb had a cottage on Colebrooke Row and in 1823 wrote: “The New

River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if a moderate walking pace can be so termed) close to the foot of the house”. It was close enough that one day his friend, the writer George Dyer, walked out of the cottage, straight into the water, and had to be rescued.

An isolated section of the New River remains in Clissold Park, Stoke Newington as a pleasant water feature. The grand oak-panelled court room of the Water House, with hunting and fishing carvings in the style of Grinling Gibbons and a water-inspired plaster ceiling, still exists, preserved within the former Metropolitan Water Board’s 1920 building at Sadler’s Wells. Perhaps the most amazing survivor is the unsuccessful 1708 windmill, the base of which still stands in Amwell Street in Islington.

The statue of Hugh Myddleton at Islington Green.

There are four statues of Hugh Myddelton in London. One is on the north façade of the Royal Exchange in the City, facing the Bank of England and another on Holborn Viaduct. There is a statue on Islington Green at the junction of Upper Street and Essex Road, unveiled in July 1862 by William Gladstone, and another in the foyer of Islington Town Hall. A number of streets, schools and buildings along the channel’s route are named after him, spelt either “Myddleton” or “Myddelton”.