Poo, Power and Potable Water: A wet and dirty walk around Tavistock – Water Walk 1

Walk 1 of 3: St Eustachius – Brook Street – Parkwood Road

We take water very much for granted unless it becomes an inconvenience – poor water quality, floods, and hose-pipe bans spring to mind. For the most part, we drink, cook, shower, bathe and flush without a second thought. However, historically, water provision would have involved considerable domestic daily labour and, unlike our invisible piped sewage systems, which hide and remove our filth, streets used to be cleansed and purged of waste by open sewers. Water was also the prime driving force behind most pre-19^th industry, such as corn mills, fulling mills, tanneries and foundries, and it was still important into the early 20^th Century, when we entered the electrical power age.

Because water is vital (we need to use it every day) , heavy (we need to avoid carrying it far) and a liquid (it flows under gravity to low points in the landscape), the geography of our places was significantly shaped by these qualities. For example, we sited settlement next to or downstream of water sources (springs and streams), and engineered convenient ways to get the water (leats, pipes and wells).

The variety of water uses, changes in water management over time, and the way the built landscape shapes and is shaped by water, are themes I will cover in this series of three blog walks. Using my format of ‘7 Interesting Things’ each walk starts and ends in the vicinity of St Eustachius church in the centre of the town. The walks can be strolled individually, but are also designed so that they flow from one to the next, and can be combined into one longer walk of about 6 km (about 4 miles).

• Walk 1 (East) – St Eustachius, Brook Street, Parkwood Road (c 1.5 km).
• Walk 2 (North) – Market Street, Lakeside, Bannawell (c. 1.5 km).
• Walk 3 (West) – West Street, Ford Street, Fitzford, The Meadows (c. 3 km)

The specifics of the Walk 1 route are described in blue text throughout the blog and also shown on the map below.

As well as consulting local historical texts, the Historic Environment Record and various OS maps, I will also be widely using the Wynne Map of the town, drawn up in c.1752 and available from the National Library of Scotland website. This map provides the earliest comprehensive snapshot of the town before significant engineered changes to water management occurred in the 19^th Century.

I also want to particularly emphasise my indebtedness to Tessa Wannell for sharing with me the unpublished manuscript of her research into the history of water and sewerage in Tavistock. Where I have used findings from Tessa’s original research I have acknowledged her and, where relevant, the original sources she has cited.

Let’s set off on Walk 1 from besides the fragment of cloister in the churchyard of St Eustachius Church.

1. Medieval Monastic Water Supply

Very little is left of Tavistock Abbey. Dissolution did for most of it. However, as a wealthy monastery, the abbey almost certainly had a high-status water supply befitting of its elite position in society. Adjacent to the River Tavy, the abbey would not have taken water for consumption from here because it would have been polluted. The abbey’s floodplain location was not great for wells either, as they would be prone to contamination. Wells might be retained by monasteries for emergency use but it was more convenient and typical, for those that could afford it, to have potable water piped to and around their monastic precinct (Bond, 2001). Such a system is exemplified in the waterworks plan of Canterbury Christ Church from 1150 AD.

It was common for monasteries to pipe water a distance of several kilometers, capturing uncontaminated flows from springs, in the cleaner headwaters of a valley. This water would then be collected in a cistern (a tank), topped with a well house (as exemplified by the Ladywell at Edington – shown below). Otherwise known as a conduit house, this water would then be piped to its destination and distributed through a network of pipes around the abbey. Often the pressurised piped water would form a fountain in the middle of the cloisters, and pipes would fan out to buildings which required it, such at the Abbot’s house and the kitchens. Towards the top of such a conduit system, there might also be settling tanks, to trap sediment, and there could be a number of ‘suspirals’ along its course (management vents that could release air or water).

Tavistock Abbey’s clean water supply almost certainly came from the springs near Hurdwick to a probable conduit house, located in the Bannawell park area (where a later conduit house was sited, and which we will be visiting on Walk 2). From here the water was likely piped to the abbey through expensive lead pipes. Nothing remains of these and they may very well have been asset-stripped when the abbey was dissolved.

In addition to its piped water, Tavistock Abbey seems to have managed above-ground water from the Lakeside/Bannawell area so that it flowed around the eastern perimeter of the precinct, probably for the purpose of cleansing/sewerage, but perhaps also to augment the Mill Brook, used to power industry. This can be seen on the Wynne map (see below). Another flow skirted the west of the abbey (see the blue arrow on the map below), where the latrines are thought to have been located. On this side there is also evidence of drains and two ‘garderobes’ (toilets) in the fabric of Betsy Grimbal’s Tower (Blaylock, 2001).

A final use of monastic water worth mentioning is a third channel that came from Bannawell and headed towards ‘The Meadows’, supposedly to supply a fish or ‘stew’ pond, situated where Plymouth Road is now, (roughly between the vicarage and the HQ bar). The Wynne Map shows this ornamental pond, which Finberg (1969, p159) suggests was monastic. Its form, of a rectangle with an island in the middle, is more in keeping with a 17^th or 18^th century date for the design of ornamental fish ponds (Bond, 2016, p48). This pond may therefore either be a fashionably updated upgrade to a former monastic stew pond, or an entirely post-monastic addition to the landscape by one of Tavistock’s more affluent residents.

Cross over the road to outside the Town Hall. Running behind this building, and behind the sweep of buildings where the Guild Hall stands, beyond the court gate arch, would have flowed the medieval Mill Brook. Walk under the Court Gate arch and stop by the Guildhall.

2. The Oldest Leat – The Mill Brook

Whilst all we can do with respect to the abbey’s domestic water supply is to imagine its engineering, when it comes to the abbey’s industrial water supply, we know a bit more. Of all the water features in Tavistock, the Mill Brook is the oldest that is historically identifiable, dating to some time between 1150 and 1200 AD (HER, Undated^a). It is from this Mill Brook leat that Brook Street gets its name.The name ‘brook’ is a bit deceiving because this water course is what we would think of as a leat. It was constructed by taking water off the Tavy at a spot known as the Head Weir, a little beyond the entrance to Mount Kelly School on the A386 road, a good kilometre up river from the centre of Tavistock.

Before learning more about the Mill Brook we might sensibly ask, why was effort put into building this leat to power water mills, when the more powerful River Tavy was already flowing nearby? The reason is that leats create a more consistent and controllable flow of water. This was a particularly important feature in terms of managing the height of the water delivered to a water wheel. River discharge rises and falls with rainfall and rivers can rage when there has been particularly heavy rain, creating destructive forces that would break a water wheel.

The leat was originally built to power the Abbey Mill, a corn mill, also termed a grist mill (Finberg, 1969, p201). Other industrial sites along its course also used it for power such as a 13^th Century tanning mill near Parkwood, and an edge-tool mill (Finberg, 1969, p196).

The Wynne Map shows the leat running down Brook Street before turning to flow alongside a range of buildings, where the Town Hall and the Guildhall now stand, before flowing back to the Tavy. Three 18^th C corn mills are identified as powered by the leat in the Wynne Map Field Book (Mettler, 2010) but these are all older, being mentioned as far back as 1556 (HER, undated^b).

A drawing by Delafontaine from 1741 shows one of these mills with its water wheel – its the one closest to the Tavy. This same mill is later captured in 1793 by the Rev John Swete, who travelled around Devon in the late 18^th century, painting and journalling (Gray, 1997, p 146). He says of it that it presents and “extraordinarily picturesque scene, possessing however but one or two slight vestiges of its antient state“. The Delafontaine etching and the Wynne map show this mill as being next to the Tavy and dwarfed by a range of buildings behind it. However, by 1793, Swete shows the surrounding buildings have been pulled down, possibly when the Abbey Bridge was built in 1763, and just visible in Swete’s painting.

When he painted the grist mill, Swete also captured two other images which he says ‘represent the Western fronts of two Gateways‘ and which are ‘contiguous‘, to the mill. One of these is a depiction of Tavistock’s well-known Court Gate. The other is that shown below. Whilst he doesn’t mention that this painting is also of a mill, this crocketed building, clearly shows tumbling energetic water powering large water-wheel. Given that Swete located this building in conjunction with the Court Gate and the grist mill, I think this painting is of the middle of the three known corn mills (shown on the map above). It is the only image that I am aware of which shows this mill. Of note, its architecture suggests the mill repurposed a high-status former monastic building – for even an abbey would surely not decorate its mills with finely crafted pinnacles.

None of these corn mill buildings survive today. All were demolished around the 1840s when the Guildhall was re-developed and a new corn mill built in the eastern part of town. We will be heading that way in a minute, but first, let’s take a closer look at the Tavy …

From the Guildhall, walk towards the river and turn left, up Market Road.

3. Riverscape Losses – The Island of The Tavy and the Great Bridge

Prior to the Pannier Market complex being opened in 1862, the Tavy, alongside Market Road, used to be wider than it is today. It was wide enough to support an island known as The Island of the Tavy. Delafontaine’s 1741 etching shows the island as having eight trees growing on it, along with a little footbridge for access; probably for grazing.

In building the Pannier Market and the new Market Road, the Tavy was revetted and narrowed, to pinch extra ground. This presumably was done by using the rubble from the clearance of the old structures where the new market was to be placed. This may have been augmented with the soil from the island, although narrowing the river artificially would have increased its energy and may have resulted in the island washing away.

The plans for the Pannier Market hang on the wall in the Town Council building. They show the proposed development in pink, overlain on a map of the river and the blue and black buildings earmarked for demolition . The striking feature of this plan is just how much of Market Road sits on ground that, in the recent past, used to be in the river channel.

The other key part of this part of the Tavistock landscape that is no longer here is the medieval Great Bridge. It used to span the river at the end of Market Road, where it turns to join Brook Street. It was known as The Great Bridge, until West Bridge was built c. 1540, at which point it took on the name of the East Bridge. The Great Bridge used to be the key crossing point across the Tavy into Tavistock in the medieval centuries (Woodcock, 1985). It was pulled down c. 1763 when the new Abbey Bridge was built.

What with the removal of the medieval bridge, the building of Abbey Bridge, the removal of the Island of the Tavy and the narrowing of the river, this Tavyside urban landscape has been radically refashioned by Georgians and then Victorians modernising their town.

Continue along Market Road, following it round to the left, then turn right at the junction with Brook Street. Cross the road and continue along until you get to the Lawson’s shop, which used to be the Town Mill .

4. Industry Examples – The Town Mill and Mount Foundry

Here on the eastern side of Tavistock we find the Town Mill (the current Lawson’s building). It was built circa 1846, replacing the three earlier corn mills that we have just been looking at that were cleared to build the Guildhall, which opened in 1848. The initial Town Mill was destroyed by fire in 1888, and it is the rebuilt strycture we see today (HER, undated^c).

The Town Mill wasn’t the only building close to this spot to use the Mill Brook for its milling power. Slap-bang in the middle of the junction with Vigo Bridge Road used to stand a malt mill, as shown on the Wynne Map (see below – Number 15); a malt mill being a mill to crush malted grains for brewing and distilling.

Continue a short distance further up Parkwood Road. To your left was The Mount Foundry, which has been developed into residential homes. Some of the former buildings can be seen if you wander up the next three roads on the left: Laburnum Cotts, Foundry Mews and Heritage Park.

Moving further up the leat was the brass and iron ‘Mount Foundry’, owned by Gill and Rundle. This foundry initially seems to have been developed around 1800 on the lower side of Parkwood Road, as a result of the burgeoning success of the mines at Mary Tavy. According to Mary Freeman its plot near Vigo Bridge redeveloped a former tannery. Once acquired, a weir was to raise the water level enough to feed a new leat to provide its water power (HER, undated^d). This weir is located just up river from the modern Stannary Bridge and can be seen on the map below (bottom right).

I am not sure if Gill and Rundle were behind the original foundry but by 1804 they were definitely in charge, expanding the works in 1808 to create the Higher Foundry (HER, undated^e). A description is given in 1815 which shows it to have included two blast and two air furnaces, hammer mills, a grinding, boring and turning mill, an edge tool manufactory and smithies, all powered by nine waterwheels. The Higher Foundry made use of the pre-existing Mill Brook, but a further new leat was constructed, taking water from near the source of the Mill Brook (see map below). This leat took water to the upper part of the Higher Foundry and used to skirt the back of the playing fields in front of Kelly College (see map below). The Lower Foundry was no longer in use by the mid 19^th C and the Higher Foundry closed in 1891, becoming, for a short time, a worsted factory.

As we have already seen with some of the examples given here, new industry often locates on the sites of former mills. This was also the case with the Higher Foundry. In the 18^th C it was preceded by a ‘tucking’ or ‘fulling’ mill, for the processing of cloth; shown as No. 32 on Wynne Map extract below. If you take a close look at this map you will also notice another building (No. 1), sited close to where our modern Stannary Bridge crosses the river. It also took water power from the Mill Brook. This mill was variously a tan mill, a shear mill (for sharpening shears) and a chop mill (for the course grinding of grain for animal feed) (HER, undated^f).

Summarising this examination of the Mill Brook and some of its examples of various generations of mills and foundries, it can be appreciated that this zone of Tavistock, along the main river corridor, was the main industrial zone of the town. Here, activities that required water power, and which might also be polluting, were able to make the most of extracting the Tavy’s water into reliable leats, contributing to the spatial geography that underlies the history of the town.

4a – If you would like to make your walk a little longer, why not amble a bit further up Parkwood Road to take a look at what remains of the Mill Brook.

Most of the Mill Brook has been filled in and covered over but a section of it can still be seen in the front garden of a house on the north side of Parkwood Road. If you have the time and energy you can walk as far as Mount Kelly school where you can see the deep upper stretches of the leat through the hedge, close to its off-take at the head weir on the Tavy.

Return back along Parkwood Road and continue on Brook Street until you get to Paddon’s Row

5. Squalid Sanitary Conditions – An Example from Paddon’s Row

Between 1831-32 and 1849 various reports were produced looking into health and sanitary conditions in Tavistock, mirroring national health concerns such as Cholera epidemics and various acts of parliament including the Public Health Act of 1848 (Woodcock, 2008, p41). Water supply, water quality, and sewage were dominant concerns. The details of the reports provide an intimate and personal account of the filthy state of homes and streets at this time – with individual families and houses named and shamed but also some focus put on the responsibility (or lack of!) for improvement by property owners such as the Duke of Bedford and others.

For those interested in the full details of these reports I recommend looking at chapters provided by Gerry Woodcock in volumes 2 and 17 or his ‘Tavistock’s Yesterdays’ books. Here, to give a flavour of the conditions described, I am going to use the example of Paddon’s Row to illustrate the insanitary environment the ordinary people of Tavistock lived in, before the provision of the subterranean engineered water and sewage solutions which form the basis for our modern water management.

In the 1831/32 the local Health Board report described Paddon’s Row:

“Every house in Paddons Row, measuring about fifteen feet square, contains a family. There is not a single necessary house belonging to it. The tenants are obliged to go as far as Mr Penwarden’s, a considerable distance, for pot water, and it has no common sewer to discharge the filth that accumulates.”

Quoted in Woodcock, 2008, p42

This is but an example, and other parts of the town were equally insanitary and ill provided for. The Sanitary Report of 1846 presented the appalling state of toileting facilities in the town at the time. It showed that WC’s (inside toilets) were only in some middle class homes. Everyone else used privies, also known as outhouses, of which the town had 284. One hundred and eighty six families had their own outhouse, whilst 329 families shared the remaining 98. Horrifyingly, 614 families had no access to a privy at all, and in these cases people had to take their effluent to the nearest dung heap, or throw it into the streets with their open flowing sewers (Woodcock, 1986, p59)

Before the 1840s Tavistock had very little in terms of a sewage system beyond that of a common sewer, that being open channels used to dump waste. Gradually, starting in the 1840s, improvements began. Initially these were designed to take waste into the Tavy via the old sewer, discharging into the Tavy by the Old Mill, but this was a location at the heart of the town, next to Abbey Bridge and where the new Guildhall was about to be built. A different solution was required and a new main sewer was constructed running towards Fitzford – where the municipal dung heap was sited – taking the sewage away from the heart of the town (Wannell, unpublished).

Through investment by the Duke of Bedford, gradually new sewers were constructed, linking up to the new main sewer. Paddon’s Row however, was not under the Duke’s ownership, and so it did not initially receive a sewer and connecting new privies. Despite the spotlight placed on its intolerable state, conditions here did not improve. In 1856 Paddon’s Row was still described as having ‘serious want of a privy‘ (Woodcock, 1986, p62) and even in 1864 it was noted that the ‘soil’ was removed from here only once every six weeks.

Today Paddon’s Row is a quaint retail arcade, be-decked with jovial bunting. However, this place, through the sanitary reports of the 19^th century, reminds us of how unfit for purpose town sewage management had become as places such as Tavistock coped with urban change. It also demonstrates that fixing the problem did not happen in one ‘event’ of investment and improvement, but instead was a long drawn out process of gradual enhancement, taking decades to brings about change.

Retrace your steps out of Paddon’s Row, turning right. Continue along Duke Street and back into Bedford Square. As you walk, make a note of the junction of Elbow Lane as you pass. Continue to the Town Hall, stopping by the covered passageway through to the Pannier Market.

6. Minor Tavistock Bridges

The larger bridges of Tavistock (West Bridge, Abbey Bridge, Vigo Bridge, and the youthful Stannary Bridge) are reasonably well appreciated. After all, apart from the demolished Great Bridge, they are all in use today. But what of its smaller bridges?

As a result of nineteenth century water engineering, urban landscapes were much altered by culverting previously above ground flows to below the streets. If we were to step back in time, we would be much more aware than we are today of water, often dirty and stinking, flowing by our feet. This, of course, necessitated minor bridging points, for who would want to wet and soil their feet in these shit and slop filled urban streams?

Tavistock therefore had a number of ‘little’ bridges including the Bridewell Bridge over the Mill Brook at the junction with Elbow Lane, and St Matthew’s Bridge, which spanned the Fishlake, whose course, as we have seen, skirted the church and abbey precinct as it made its way to the Tavy. St Matthew’s Bridge was situated roughly in alignment with the passageway under the Town Hall to today’s Pannier Market. Both of these bridges can be seen on the Wynne Map and I have highlighted them by circling them in blue.

Whilst we are on this topic, amd thinking about the wider Tavistock landscape, the Bridewell and St Matthews were not the only ‘minor’ bridges. According to Woodcock (1993, p15) there was also a Buddle Bridge, described as being over the Fishlake ‘near the point at which the waters had been diverted‘, although Hicks (1947), quoted in HER^g says that it was further up the watercourse, at the lower end of King Street. The Wynne Map also shows two small bridges to the west of the town called ‘Coles Bridge’ and ‘Coney Bridge’ (see map above – we will be passing their locations on Walk 3). Coles Bridge would have spanned a small watercourse that flowed from Boughthayes (now culverted under the Callington road) at the Ford Street junction, whilst Coney Bridge was close to West Bridge. Coles Bridge or Coney Bridge are possibly represented in the following 18th C watercolour of the Fitz Ford gatehouse.

Finally for this walk, head for the Court Gate arch.

7. The First Public Urinals

Following the Nuisance Removal Act of 1855, towns across the land set up Nuisance Removal Committees to make places more sanitary and less filthy. This included addressing the issue of urban peeing. If one is in the countryside then peeing behind a tree or against a hedge is no big deal. In a town though, needing to wee creates a problem. Prior to the provision of public conveniences men, in an urban public setting, would look for dark and obscure corners of town to let flow.

According to Woodcock (1993, p44), the shelter provided by the Court Gate, along with its paraphernalia of carts and barrels, made the dark recesses of this medieval arch a favoured place to take a leak. Tavistock’s Nuisance Removal Committee therefore decided that a solution could be found by installing two town centre urinals in 1857 – one at the intersection of Church Lane with Garden Lane (presumably another popular urination hub), and another under the Court Gate itself (Woodcock, 1986, p62). 

Let’s stop and reflect on the wisdom of making the Court Gate an official urinal. It seems to have been selected because it was already a preferred piddling place. The logic seems to have been, if men are going to wee here anyway, lets at least make sure it is managed properly. However, as an historic landmark, it is an odd choice to make. Woodcock quotes letters to the Tavistock Gazette acknowledging its venerable historic status but that ‘it is not safe to be examined except at a distance‘.

Both urinals were described as filthy and in a disagreeable state in 1858. They remained in a foul condition until 1866, when the Duke of Bedford funded a bespoke toilet block to be built at the end of the Guildhall. This location was described as being in the shade and, as Woodcock puts it, ‘the necessary provision performing its essential, but mercifully unobtrusive service of relief‘ (Woodcock, 1993, p44). These early urinals, which are right next to the current public toilets, are blocked up and look like no more than a wall and are easily missed, so I am grateful to Alex Mettler for pointing their position out to me.

With all this focus on men’s urinals one might rightly ask, what about women? Where could they wee? In this regard, public toilet history is very enlightening in putting a spotlight on gender-related social history. I will let Elphick (2018) explain:

“Of course, this affected women’s ability to leave the home, as women who wished to travel had to plan their route to include areas where they could relieve themselves. Thus, women never travelled much further than where family and friends resided. This is often called the ‘urinary leash’, as women could only go so far as their bladders would allow them.”

Unless you have a phobia of public toilets, nobody in Tavistock need fear the ‘urinary leash’ as, if you are caught short, you can still take a tinkle here, in the crenelated Edwardian amenity, now modernised with unisex cubicles and hygienic automatic soap-water-air hand washing.

Summary

So, we end Walk 1 at the toilets, with an opportune moment for a ‘comfort’ break. In this first water walk of three we looked at the eastern part of the town. I would characterise this walk as one dealing with some of the dirtiest aspects of water use and abuse. We have encountered how, before 19^th C underground sewage systems washed excrement into the river, filthy water used to run in plain site through the streets. Walking about town would have caused an assault to the eyes and nose and small bridges were needed to one did not have to soil one’s feet in the flowing open sewers. However, most defining of this zone of Tavistock is the fact that this area was best suited to harnessing the water of the River Tavy, using leats to power Tavistock’s industry; it being an industrial district from medieval times right through to the Victorian age.

In walks 2 and 3 industrial and sanitary matters will appear again but will not be so dominant. Head now to Walk 2 where the provision of potable water – that is, water used for human consumption – will be the focus of the next water rambling

If you are continuing straight to Water Walk 2, then cross the road from Bedford Square and walk past St Eustachious Church, heading for Lower Market Street …

References

Blaylock, S. R.. 2001. Tavistock Abbey: Further Recording of the Standing Fabric. Exeter Archaeology Report.

Bond, J., 2016. Fishponds in the monastic economy in England. In Historical Aquaculture in Northern Europe, by Bonow, M., Olsén, H and Svanberg, I. (Eds.)

Bond, J. 2001. Monastic Water Management in Great Britain: A review. In Keevil, G, Aston, M, and Hall, T (Eds.) Monastic Archaeology. Oxbow Books.

Elphick, C. 2018. The History of Women’s Public Toilets in Britain. https://www.historic-uk.com/

Finberg, H.P.R. 1969. Tavistock Abbey – A Study in the Social and Economic History of Devon. Augustus M. Kelley, Publishers, New York.

Gray, T. 1997. Travels in Georgian Devon: The Illustrated Journals of the Reverend John Swete (1789 – 1800). Devon Books.

HER, Undated^a. Mill Brook, Tavistock, MDV19146. https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk

HER, Undated^b. Tavistock Abbey Mill, MDV3924. https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk

HER, Undated^c. Town Mill, Tavistock, MDV65932. https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk

HER, Undated^d. Lower Foundry, Tavistock, MDV61918. https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk

HER, Undated^e. Mount Foundry, Tavistock, MDV4093. https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk

HER, Undated^f. Former Mill, Parkwood Road, Tavistock. MDV1599. https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk

HER, Undated^g. The Fishlake, or Buddle, MDV3929. https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk

Mettler, A.E., 2010, Field Book to the Plan of Tavistock: 1751 and 1752, Monograph.

Mettler, A. 2022. Devon Country Town Breweries and Public Houses: Tavistock 1752 to 2020. Tavistock Heritage Trust and Tavistock Local History Society.

Wannell, T. Unpublished Manuscript. The History of Water and Sewage in Tavistock.

Woodcock, G. 1985. Tavistock’s Yesterdays, Volume 1. Penwell Limited, Callington.

Woodcock, G. 1986. Tavistock’s Yesterdays, Volume 2. Penwell Limited, Callington.

Woodcock, G. 1993. Tavistock’s Yesterdays, Volume 9. Penwell Limited, Callington.

Woodcock, G. 2008. Tavistock’s Yesterdays, Volume 17. CPI Antony Rowe, Eastbourne.