On this second of three water walks in Tavistock we will amble around Market Street, the Lakeside and Bannawell. Today Tavistock’s centre of gravity is Bedford Square and the Pannier Market, but if we went back to before the mid 19th century then this part of town was the commercial hub. This was where the Saxon town began and where meat, fish, bread and other market goods were sold. As its historic heart, it was vital to provide this area with an effectively managed water system. It is therefore the provision of potable water to this oldest part of the borough that forms the focus of this walk.
Through these three water walks I am aiming to convey the wide variety of ways water has impacted on Tavistock’s heritage. Using my format of ‘7 Interesting Things’ each walk starts and ends roughly in the vicinity of St Eustachius Church in the town centre. In total there are therefore 21 ‘interesting things’ to encounter, and I have chosen each interesting thing to cover a diversity of water-related parts of Tavistock’s landscape and history.
The three 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). These are:
- 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 route are described throughout this blog in blue text and also shown on the map below.
| Sources and acknowledgements To write this trio of blogs I have consulted a number of local historical texts, the Historic Environment Record and histiric 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 19th Century. I also want to acknowledge my indebtedness to Tessa Wannell for sharing the unpublished manuscript of her research into the history of water and sewerage in Tavistock.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 get going!
From St Eustachius Church, cross West Street into Market Street. Head for the small car park in Bank Square and find a safe spot to stand.
1. The Lower Fishlake Conduit
Take a moment to look at the tarmac of Market Street and the metal manhole covers set into it. Capped beneath this road surface is culverted water which used to flow above ground, right down the middle of the street. This water was variously known as the ‘Fishlake’, ‘Buddle’, ‘Lakeside’, or just ‘Lake’. Now invisible, this stream came from a crucial natural water source, vital for Tavistock’s development. In fact, the reason that Tavistock and the abbey are situated at this point in the Tavy valley was chiefly governed by this stream – the town developing around it for their source of water.
The Fishlake issued from the fields near Hurdwick, to the north, and flowed south to join the Tavy, providing an ideal gravity-fed source of spring water to the town and abbey. It is no coincidence that the medieval town, its markets, the parish church and abbey all lie on the line of this valley, from which its water was exploited (see map above).
Its course can be seen on the Wynne Map, flowing in an open conduit (an open sewer) and passing under buildings described as the Higher Market House, then the Lower Market House, before its left turn at the church. Whilst it would have originally been a natural stream, as the town developed, it was ‘channelised’ to control its flow through the medieval streets. Small foot bridges were added so that people could cross to and fro. According to a rent-roll of 1291 AD, fifteen residents paid 2d each for having footbridges across it (HERa), perhaps monetising the conduit to help pay for its upkeep?
The fact the Fishlake passed through the Higher and Lower Market Houses is typical of what might be expected of a pre-Victorian water system. Markets were busy focal places where buyers and traders would have cause to use water. They typically had open water for cleansing of market detritus such as the blood and carcasses of butchered meat. The market houses would also have been connected to underground piped water (more of which in a minute). Lee (2014), in a paper about water supply in medieval towns, lists many examples that demonstrate a conjunction between a town’s conduit supply and their market place. Wannell’s research for Tavistock (unpublished) confirms both the Higher and Lower Market Houses possessed running water.
In the early 19th Century the open conduit ‘sewers’ in Market Street and Lower Market Street (formerly called Fore Street), were covered over. This had a knock on impact on the town’s improvement, for covering the open sewer prevented residents from being able to tip their excrement into it. This necessitated the building of ‘necessaries’ as highlighted in a letter from Andrew Wilson to the Duke of Bedford’s auditor in London:
Wilson, 1822, In Wannell, Unpublished.
‘In filling up the road in Fore Street to the height of the reeve* [West Street?] in front of the Houses, a stream of water must be covered, in which case there must be necessary Houses built behind the dwelling houses, or otherwise the street would be constantly covered with filth, for strange to say there is not one house in twenty in Tavistock that has a Necessary. And I do think the only thing that keeps the Town from contagion is the water that flows down the different streets.’
As mentioned, as well as the open water channels that acted as sewers, Tavistock had an underground piped water system that followed the same course. Further along this walk we will see evidence for this, but at this stage, it is sufficient to imagine the two Market Houses with their piped water. Where urban piped water systems existed, these would provide a number of public taps to various parts of a town where people could come to collect it. Wealthy individuals on the other hand were able to pay for private pipes directly into their own property (Lee, 2014). Still, even if you needed to lug the heavy water home, for the most part you were getting water that was, by historic standards, consumable.
Walk a short way up Market Street, and then stop opposite the Coop shop.
2. Market Street Brewery – An Example of Commercial Water Conflict
In Water Walk 1 we encountered foundries, corn mills, fulling mills and a tannery, all close to the Tavy where, before the arrival of 19th C reservoirs and sewage systems, the dirtier industries of Tavistock clustered. Market Street, in this part of town, gives us the opportunity to consider another industry – brewing. Unlike the other activities mentioned, brewing requires cleaner water otherwise the beer’s taste will become tainted. It is unsurprising then that Tavistock’s oldest common brewery – Market Street Brewery – was sited within this part of the town, where a potable water supply was available.
The history of the brewery is covered in detail by Alex Mettler (2022) in his book about the breweries and public houses of Tavistock. According to Mettler the site is known to have been a malthouse in the early 18th C and by 1798 it first appears in a directory as a common brewery – a large brewery that supplies others. Malthouses and breweries require large quantities of water and so, in this location, this seems to have put the brewery into direct competition with the water supply to the town.
By 1802 the brewery was benefitting from a leat (known as the Leys Leat or Brewery Leat). This was paid for by the parish and supposedly constructed ‘to keep the Town free from an overflow of water when all the brooks at the higher end of town were full to running over‘ (Mettler, 2022, p43). This leat used to come off the Fishlake, running around the hillside above the brewery, following a contour to Old Exeter Road, exiting back into the Tavy close to where the Town Mill would be built (p48).
Sharp practice seems to have been behind the digging of this leat. There appears to have been an ulterior motive for its construction. Edward Bray, the Duke of Bedford’s steward in 1802, was a key player in getting the leat built. Edward, as well as being the Duke’s steward, was also a partner in the brewery, and therefore had a conflict of interest. Letters from a later steward to the Duke suggest that Bray acted without the knowledge of the Bedford Estate. This tale has all the hallmarks of both embezzlement of the Duke’s water rights, alongside the misappropriation of public money to fund the brewery’s water supply.
For example, in a letter by Andrew Wilson, who became the Duke of Bedford’s steward, he states:
‘Being at the higher end of Town, all the filth arising from the Brewery has to pass in drains a great distance through the streets before it reaches the river. But there is another evil attending it, which is that there is a leet carried across what is called the leys, for giving water to the brewery, for working the machinery etc, this was carried into effect in the time of the late Mr Bray solely with a view to the accommodation of the Brewery, & not with any view to His Grace’s interest, as this leet does not only waste the property, but must tend to keep the Houses somewhat damp, which are on the lower level than the leet …“
Wilson, 1831, quoted by Mettler, 2022, p46
Fragments of the leat were still be evident on the OS first edition 6 inch to a mile map of 1884, but after that it disappears from the landscape; the new Drake Road obliterating much of it.
Continue up the hill, along Lakeside, noticing the Bedford Foundry. Perhaps stop to read its information board? Follow the road around to the left and then turn right up Bannawell Street. Cross the road into Bannawell Park and follow the path on the left down to the stream.
3. The Conduit House at Bannawell Park – ‘The Buddle’
We have been learning about the old centre of Tavistock and the fact that piped water, as well as water in open conduits, came down this valley to serve the people of the town. Now we have walked further up this valley we have reached a key place for the origin of this water supply.
In modern Tavistock, close to this spot, there is a road called Buddle Close. The name ‘Buddle’ is normally one associated with mining, it being a pond used for the washing of crushed ore, to separate out minerals. There are no mines here, so what else might the Buddle refer to? The Wynne Map provides the answer, showing a small building adjacent to the Fishlake with the following description:
‘Buddle House where the head of the pipes are fixt that convey the water to the Higher Conduit’
The Buddle, at this place, is therefore a building where the pipes start, taking piped water into the town via the ‘Higher Conduit’ (almost certainly the Higher Market House). It is evidence that, at least in the 18th C, Tavistock had a piped water supply.
As well being a conduit house where the pipes started, The Buddle House would have contained a cistern (water storage tank). It is probable that the name ‘buddle’ is an alternative name for this cistern. In this sense it has a similar meaning to the pool of water in the mining context. Tavistock’s Buddle is not be the only place in Devon where the name ‘buddle’ crops up, associated with water supply rather than mining. Exeter has a Buddle Lane for which local folklore says it may have been named after emanating springs. There is also a Buddle Well in Hatherleigh, first recorded in 1658 and which, at some point in its history was furnished with a pipe and tap (HERb).
How long did Tavistock have a piped water supply system? The Sanitary Report of 1846 mentions the laying of new town pipes and that before this the ‘conduits or stand-pipes formerly in various localities throughout the streets have been removed‘ indicating that Georgian Tavistock did have a pressurised distributed water system (Woodcock, 2008, p59). Rachel Evans, writing in 1843 mentions eight conduits (taps) and three pumps, all for public use (ibid, p77). These were in Bannawell Street, Higher Market Street, Church Bow, Higher Back Street, Bedford Square, Exeter Street and two in West Street.
That Tavistock had piped water even earlier, in the c. 1560s, is confirmed by the mention of the directing of a conduit of water into the house of the merchant John Glanville. Glanville’s property was in the centre of town, on the corner of Market Street and Butchers Street , with this water supplied from a ‘Buddle House’ situated by the Fishlake stream (Freeman, quoted by Wannell, unpublished).
Did Tavistock have piped water at an even earlier date? Lee (2014) makes the point that there is a growing appreciation, from places for which records enable interpretation, that even small towns possessed engineered public water supplies by the later Middle Ages, including, as a local example, Ashburton. Piped water supplies were common for monastic houses from the 12th C and, in the late medieval period, urban authorities increasingly worked with religious houses to take shared responsibility for the provision of conduits.
Based on what is known from elsewhere we can justifiably ponder on Tavistock’s water supply before the abbey was dissolved c.1540. Did the borough have a shared responsibility for a piped water system with the abbey? Were the town’s religious and civic water supplies always managed separately? Did the town lack piped water, only taking over the pipes after dissolution? We may never know but, as the trope goes, ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’.
Cross the footbridge and take a left to look at the playground whose footprint follows that of the former Bannawell Baths.
4. Bannawell Swimming Bath
Victorians, spurred by sanitary public health concerns, presided over a massive growth in public baths. The Public Baths and Wash-houses Act of 1844 led to hundreds of municipal baths being built with more than 300 active public outdoor pools at their peak. Tavistock didn’t get its own outdoor pool until 1883, a gift from the Duke of Bedford.
The unheated pool was taken over by Tavistock Urban District Council in 1911. It was open in the summer months from 7am to 10 am, 3pm to 5pm, and 6pm to 8pm for men and boys, and only 11 am to 2 pm for ladies and girls (Woodcock, 1990, p62). Adults paid two pence a session and the cost for boys and girls under 14 was one pence. Season tickets were available and swimming costumes and towels could be hired.
The pool survived for over one hundred years, only closing in 1989, when the indoor, heated, and all year leisure pool called Meadowlands took over. By this time, as Woodcock put it, the baths were showing increasing signs of age and ‘the onset of incontinence‘. Bannawell Bath is lost as a physical and emotional landmark to younger generations – they have their memories of Meadowlands – but many of us still remember swimming, splashing and screeching in Bannawell’s chillsome, bracing waters.
Retrace your steps (but don’t go back over the footbridge) and follow the footpath downslope. On your left, under verdant cover, you will just about see the buttressed walls of the old reservoir.
5. Tavistock’s Earliest Drinking Water Reservoir
Amongst the many changes to the built environment sparked by industrialisation and urbanisation was the construction of reservoirs. This was necessitated by the growth and concentration of populations in urban centres, alongside health and sanitary issues (fuelled by disease episodes such as Cholera and Typhus). For new industrial centres such as the ballooning cities of northern England, this required the building of many voluminous new reservoirs. Some of the earliest examples are the Gorton reservoirs in Manchester, built around 1825/26 and the Belmont reservoir serving Bolton (1826). Tavistock’s first reservoir for the supply of potable public water was tiny in comparison.
Bannawell reservoir was constructed in 1845, spurred by the discovery in 1842 of sewage leaking from the workhouse, into the main water pipe at the top of Bannawell Street (Woodcock, 1986, p59). As we have seen, this means that sewage was getting into the water before it entered the pipes of the Buddle House. From a modern perspective, building the workhouse on ground just above the town’s water supply looks reckless, but this was still a time when there was a limited understanding of the processes of water contamination.
The choice of site for this first reservoir is obvious. It impounded water for drinking from the place that had been used to supply Tavistock with drinking water for centuries, taking over from the Buddle House. It supplied piped water to about half the houses in the town, typically with shared access to pipes. Woodcock explains that the rest of the town was either too high or too far from this reservoir to benefit. These houses still had to rely on domestic wells or pumps, or having to make a journey to collect water from civic taps.
Initially the reservoir prompted complaints in the 1846 Sanitary Report from John Benson, Steward to the Duke of Bedford. He criticised some owners for not providing piped water to their premises from the newly installed town pipes, acknowledging that poor tenants in these properties could not afford to pay for the connection themselves. However, he went on to bemoan those who assist the poor who do not have a water supply to obtain it ‘by begging and stealing‘ as the ‘worst enemies of the town‘ on the basis that water agreements state that water use must be solely for one’s own household use (Woodcock, 2008, p69). Underlying these comments is the economic bottom line – reservoirs and piped water systems are costly to install and manage. For this new water supply to be sustainable, sufficient people needed to pay to receive piped water, otherwise the infrastructure would not pay for itself.
Despite the new reservoir, water supply problems continued with new houses built on higher ground unable to ‘tap in’ to the system, such as those on Watts Road and Kilworthy Lane. Distance from the water pipes also caused issues. Buildings along Brook Street, West Street, Ford Street and the up and coming Plymouth Road were all too far from the pipes for the gravity-pressured water to stretch to. It is for these reasons that Tavistock’s first reservoir was soon joined by others, to the east and west and higher up the town’s hill-slopes. These included the large covered Kilworthy Reservoir on Kilworthy Lane (c. 1865) , a reservoir just north of Watt’s Road, as well as one west of the workhouse (highlighted on the map above).
Coming back to Bannawell reservoir, it is different to most reservoirs we see today. These familiar lakes are large impounding reservoirs, designed to block a valley with a dam. Bannawell is different. It was build against the hillside, with its lower edge a wall; high and heavily buttressed against the heavy pressure of the tank of water. Rather than take its water directly off the Fishlake, instead it was deigned to be indirectly fed via the Brewery Leat, and so it sits a little above the Fishlake stream.
Have you seen Bannawell reservoir? It can still just about be observed, although few people know it is there. Overgrown by shrubs and ivy. The brewery leat that watered it is now just a topographic impression on the hillside, and Bannawell reservoir a tank of trees, not water.
Follow the footpath back to the entrance to Bannawell Park. Cross back over the road and head back down Bannawell Street. Stop anywhere you fancy along this road to consider Bannawell’s history.
6. Bannawell Street – A Watery Place-name
Any placename containing ‘well’ clearly has a watery heritage. The first record of Bannawell dates to 1320 as ‘Banewelle‘ , as identified in ‘The Place-names of Devon’ (Gover et al, 1931, p218). Here it is suggested this the name is probably ‘Bana’s Spring’ although they do entertain the idea that it might be the ‘slayer’s spring’ or even the ‘spring of the bones’. This is because the Old English word ‘ban‘ or ‘bana‘ means, bones, slayer or killer, later morphing into the Middle English ‘bane‘. We use the word bane as meaning ‘death, ruin, plague, and poison’ and it features in the phrase ‘you are the bane of my life’.
It is the first of these suggestions – that of Bana’s Well – that is the one that has locally gained traction as the origin of the name, but I want to champion the other possible meanings – that connected to death. The eminent landscape place-name specialists Gelling and Cole (2000) interpret, for a place called Banwell in Somerset, that this name form is common, and in their opinion ought to be interpreted as ‘killer well’, as in a contaminated spring (p33). Rather than a fabricated interpretation of a mysterious Saxon chap called Bana, I think it more probable the name refers to the filthy and lethal quality of the water here. This makes both landscape and historic sense.
Water courses, as we have seen, were routinely used as open sewers to purge streets of waste – human excrement and urine, rubbish, blood and offal. This might be fine if the water was not for consumption, but where the water conduit was needed to drink and cook with, this clearly presented a problem. This is why there are records such as late fourteenth-century ordinances made at York to instruct butchers not to throw refuse or offal into the river where water was drawn for brewing or baking, or that in Winchester, where dyers could dispose of waste into the water at night but not by day (Lee, 2014).
I take pleasure in the Bannawell placename. For me it is speaks of Tavistock’s earliest history. It’s name-form is old – Middle English or earlier and its etymology is like a folkloric warning of the harm to health its waters had caused. It testifies to the many centuries of water quality issues here, long before the contamination of the Buddle by sewage from the workhouse. It reminds us of the vulnerability of health in days gone by and the fragile way this Tavistock water supply and this valley could both sustain and yet sometimes take away life.
Continue all the way down Bannawell, under the viaduct, into King Street and then on to the junction with West Street. Take a right turn here and continue a short way to the final stop on this walk at the Queen’s Head.
7. The Queen’s Head Well
Before we get into the details of the well at the Queen’s Head, first I need to address what is meant by a well. Typically, when we conjure an image of a well, we imagine a deep circular hole in the ground. This is but one form of well, and that most commonly used in a modern sense. Historically though, the name of ‘well’ has been used to describe other water sources such as springs, fountains and gushing water. So, for example, St John’s Well, which we will encounter on Water Walk 3, was a gushing spring of water, not a deep hole in the ground. However, in this blog section, I will be focusing on man-made excavated wells.
Virtually no well shafts remain in Tavistock’s urban landscape. They have mostly been filled in, but before reservoirs and a comprehensive piped water system, Tavistock had many wells. A feature of a well’s construction is that it needs to be dug deep enough to reach pure water, filtered through rock. Unfortunately, human and industrial wastes can contaminate groundwater, leading to wells being prone to becoming polluted. This might be exacerbated by local geology and topographic setting. For example, wells are more prone to contamination in floodplain locations. For Tavistock Abbey, its floodplain location was directly downstream of the medieval town to the north and the industrial sites to the east, meaning that wells would have been of limited use to the monastery.
Because Tavistock had a piped water system to the heart of the town, many buildings did not need there own well and documents show that wells were more common on streets, such as West Street, that were beyond the reach of the primitive water pipes.
A Tavistock well that still exists is the one in the Queen’s Head pub. The Historic Environment Record (HER, undatedc) is rather fanciful, in my opinion, on the heritage of this well. It offers this summary:
‘Roman well situated in the courtyard at the rear of the hotel. The well, which was considered to be a holy well by the monks of Tavistock Abbey, was mentioned in 1597 by John Ffytz, owner of former buildings on the site.‘
HER, undatedc
Unfortunately no evidence is provided to substantiate its bold ‘Roman’ claim. Tavistock is devoid of any Roman archaeology. For the Queen’s Head well to be Roman it would have to significantly pre-date any known settlement in the town by several centuries. As for it being a Holy Well, again, I think this is very unlikely. Holy wells are almost always natural springs not man-made shafts in the ground. Perhaps this is a case of alcohol-fuelled exaggeration, typical of boozy hyperbolic pub conversations.
Summary
Unlike Walk 1, which ended at the toilets, we end Walk 2 at a pub – another opportunity for a ‘comfort’ break! In this second water walk the focus has been on water for consumption and water quality. We have strolled through the ancient market-heart of Tavistock, where its medieval town flourished, nurtured on the water from the Fishlake. We have seen how this water flowed through the streets, purging town-waste, but was also piped to communal taps, at least as far back as 1560 AD. Dismantled and poorly remembered, for centuries this water entered pipes at the Buddle House, a building for which there is a strong argument that it was one of the most consequential buildings in Tavistock’s history. Finally, in looking at this potable water story, we have seen how susceptible this precious water was to contamination , a vulnerability that may have given us the prognostic name of Bannawell.
In walks 1 and 2 we have been exploring domestic, commercial and industrial water use in the heart of the town. Walk 3 will see us step beyond the town centre for a longer stroll, to examine water use and management in the wider Tavistock landscape including the Fitz Well, West Bridge, The Meadows, the Canal and St John’s Well.
If you are continuing straight on to Water Walk 3 then you can carry on along West Street and into Ford Street where you can follow along in the next blog.
References
Gelling, M and Cole, A. 2000. The Landscape of Place-Names. Shaun Tyas: Stamford.
Gover, J.E.B., Mawr, . and Stenton, F.M. 1931. The Place-names of Devon, Part 1. English Place-Name Society. Volume Viii, Cambridge University Press: London.
HER, Undateda. The Fishlake, or Buddle, MDV3929. https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk
HER, Undatedb. Buddle Spring and Fountain Head, High Street, Hatherleigh, MDV126649 https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk
HER, Undatedc. Well at the Queens Head Hotel, 80 West Street, Tavistock, MDV127099 https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk
Lee, J. S. 2014. Piped water supplies managed by civic bodies in medieval English towns. Urban History, 41(3), 369–393. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26398298
Wannell, T. Unpublished Manuscript. The History of Water and Sewage in Tavistock.
Woodcock, G. 1986. Tavistock’s Yesterdays, Volume 2. Penwell Limited, Callington.
Woodcock, G. 1990. Tavistock’s Yesterdays, Volume 6. Penwell Limited, Callington.
Woodcock, G. 2008. Tavistock’s Yesterdays, Volume 17. CPI Antony Rowe, Eastbourne.
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