A history of pollution and protection of chalk streams in Winchester

Winchester’s crystal clear waterways, both river and brooks, have always been a boon to the city.  The River Itchen, a naturally pure and filtered chalk stream, was improved by the Romans who moved the river channel East, by King Alfred in the 800s who diverted off Lower, Middle and Upper Brooks plus others, to flow through the city, and by various churchmen, including Bishop Aethelwold who created a stone conduit to bring water to the Priory of St. Swithun complex in the 900s AD.

But when there are inadequate systems to take away waste from the city, the water ways also become the sewage system and not so crystal clear.  Winchester has struggled with this through its history. 

In 1382 Bishop William of Wykeham planned his new school for 70 poor scholars on a site called Dummersfield, just outside the priory of St. Swithun.  He required that a grill be placed over the stream that entered the college from the monastery grounds, to stop the visible detritus in the water from getting as far as the College grounds.  These were south (that is downstream) of the monastery and the city (germ theory was centuries away of course).  He also demanded that a person be employed to catch ‘the offending dung, carcasses and putrid entrails’ that resulted.  The monastery was not so happy to pay for this member of staff and a long-drawn out court case ensued.  Despite the grill, the water stream continued to be smelly and disgusting and a wall was built round Outer Court in the 16th century to protect the Warden and Fellows from the ditch.

In the city too, the streams and brooks could prove, a sometimes deadly, nuisance, while also providing a livelihood for those engaged in laundering, and fulling, dying and washing the woollen fabric made in the city.  From the 15th century we see local government ordinances attempting to keep the watercourses clean such as ‘if any man cast any donge, straw, dede hogge, dogge or catte or any other fylthye into the water wherby the water mought be stoppid’ they should be fined twelve pence. But the repetition of the ordinances from time to time suggest that the bylaws were not usually adhered to. In the mid-1500s it was the responsibility of everyone whose property abutted the stream to scour its bed and from 1554 the Brooks were stopped for ten days in May every year, for the cleaning to be done. Punishments were handed out to those who did not attend to their part of the Brook.

Other local laws forbade certain trades from polluting the river too grievously – butchers were forbidden to put entrails or other vile things into the river, unless they cut them up into four inch pieces.  Dyers produced a slimy byproduct called woadgore, and this was forbidden to be thrown into the rivers except at night before sunrise.  Butchers, fishmongers, pig keepers, and those not using privies but simply the streets were also subject to rules. The flouting of these and the resulting disease outbreaks made Winchester renowned, so that a Venetian visitor to the city in 1554 said 'They have some little plague... well nigh every year ...the cases for the most part occur amongst the lower classes, as if their disslute mode of life impaired their constitutions'. However, it was more likely that it was the lower, damper, less well-drained parts of the city around the Brooks area, where the ‘lower classes’ lived in medieval Winchester, that caused the ‘little plagues’.

Earlier in the medieval period a landmark case brought by one of these ‘lower class’ citizens against a rich and powerful merchant had the consequence of protecting the waterways by law and had unintended consequences for the environment even centuries later.  Julianna, was a washerwoman with premises on Upper Brook Street in 1299.  She let out her waste water into the Upper Brook and her downstream neighbour – John de Tytinge, was not very happy about this.  He was a rich wool merchant, and twice Mayor of Winchester.  A powerful adversary with a huge house where the Brooks Shopping Centre is today.  You can find out more about him at the Winchester City Museum.  He and his men attempted to intimidate Julianna and stopped the flow of water upstream of her premises and hence her access to it.  She complained to the city authorities and eventually the case went before the King, Edward I at the Great Hall.  Julianna won her case, and Edward gave his ruling that ‘Water has always been common’.  He was a great believer in English common law and here he meant that water and access to it has always been a common right of everybody.  Not to be owned, sold or restricted by anybody else.  But appended to this was a ruling that users of the water should not pollute it, for example with: refuse of woad; hides from tanning; dung of men or animals or guts of animals; animal (butchers) and human (barbers) blood; children’s nappies; nor have garderobes or drains over it. 

This famous ruling called the Concordance de Julianne, is the earliest piece of environmental legislation relating to water in Europe and it went on to become part of English Common Law.  Later in the nineteenth century it was used in developing the Public Trust Doctrine, which concerns the responsibility of heads of state and governments to protect common resources such as clean water and clean air.  Today the Public Trust Doctrine is being used by groups bringing cases against governments for not protecting access to clean air.  But it can equally be used against governments for not protecting clean water.  All thanks to a determined Wintonian Julianna, who became known as Julianna de la Floude.

Historically Winchester has been a political, as well as legal, battleground over clean water too.  In the 1800s it was becoming obvious that disease was caused by polluted water.  Winchester suffered an outbreak of the water-borne cholera in 1848 and the people who lived at the lower end of town, below Parchment street, suffered the worst.  By this time, piped water was available thanks to the waterworks off St. James Lane.  But there was still no proper drainage and so waste water made its way downhill to the lowest part of town.  A report found babies playing on effluent soaked floors, and overflowing cesspits.  But in local government those who were pro building sewers, nicknamed the anti-Muckabites, were often voted down by the so-called Muckabites who opposed the 6 pence rise in rates new sewers would have cost.  Eventually the issue was resolved by a national government requirement for sewers and the main sewer was built from North Walls to Bull Drove in 1875.  But it’s impossible to tell how many lives were lost in the Brooks, where the average life expectancy was only 42, due to the delay.

Erica Wheeler is a Winchester City Tourist Guide.  Winchester Guides are running two Hidden Waterways guided tours this year on August 19 and September 21.  Tickets available from the Visitor Information Centre, Broadway, Winchester online at http://winchestertouristguides.com.