From the Archives

Fetid Fairford

Although today we all take the provision of efficient sewers for granted (until they become blocked!), this was not always the case. The Second Report of the Royal Sanitary Commission, published in 1874, presented the results of a nation-wide survey of the state of Britain’s sewers, drains, water supply and medical facilities. The report make uneasy reading!

Under the heading Sewerage the report for Fairford reads:
“There is no proper public sewerage or drainage in the town. Sewers are ventilated by open gratings and in part by rain pipes. Sewers and house drains are not trapped. Some drains go into the river, many into a watercourse, which empties into the river between Fairford and Lechlade. The houses are not generally supplied with waterclosets or privies capable of being flushed with water. Cesspools and ashpits are not deodorized. Houses do not generally drain into the sewers. A great many are without the means of communication.”

Under the heading of Water Supply it is stated that:
“Water supply is chiefly obtained from wells, some of which are polluted, and in very few it is pure, in part from the river Colne, into which very little drainage runs. There is no general plan for utilizing the rainfall.”

Perhaps surprisingly the section on Treatment of Disease records that:
“There have been a few cases of typhus or scarlet fever, but no special outbreak of disease, since 1853.” Perhaps people had stronger constitutions in the 1870s!

The Commissioners obtained their information by sending out a questionnaire to each parish and the respondents for Fairford are listed as Lord Dynevor, the vicar; Robert Hayward, a plumber; Henry Dancy, the owner of a drapers in the Market Place; and Samuel Vines, a retired ironmonger. They sent in their reply on 16 February 1870 but it took another four years for the report to be published—nothing changes, does it?

Another Government survey, Water Undertakings, published in 1914 showed little real progress with the majority of the Fairford’s water coming from a spring near the Mill; the river Coln; and numerous wells.

From the Fairford Parish Council Minutes, July 8th, 1903
“Reference was made by Mr Cole that on certain days there was a quantity of soapsuds escaping from the drains of the cottages belonging to the Church Lands into the Green ditch & the Clerk was directed to write to Mr A H Iles drawing his attention to the fact.”

No Pigs Here!

Following on from the report on 'Smelly Fairford' in the last Fairford Flyer comes a letter from ironmonger and property owner Samuel Vines, from whom Vines Row derives its name. The letter was written at Fairford on 9th January 1888 by Samuel and refers to the change of tenancy of one of his properties:
"Dear Sir
I have no objection to Thomas Witchell going into the other house but he must pay the same rents as he pays now. I will have a furnace put in. There is a kitchen range already which I took to Robert Herbert and there is a large yard. The privies were in that yard but at one time after a glut of rain the water overflowed and ran down the path into the well and we were forced to empty the well and move the privies to the bottom of the garden. Therefore they must not keep a pig there.
Wishing you a Happy New Year.
Yours faithfully Sam Vines"

This is yet another example of the state of sanitation in 19th Century Fairford!

Fairford’s first telephonist?

Way back in Fairford Flyer number 7 (July 2008) there was a brief article on the introduction of the telephone to Fairford in about 1908 by which time 17 households had the ‘phone installed. While adding the 1911 census entries to the Fairford Register project (23,000 names and still growing!) I came across the person who was probably Fairford’s very first telephonist. Edith Mabel Jackson, aged 25 in 1911, lived at 29 London Street with her father Edward, a GWR porter at Fairford station, her mother Emma and her sister Elsie, a teacher. In the 1901 census Edith had been listed as a draper’s assistant but in 1911 her occupation was given as a telephone operator for the National Telephone Company (NTC).

The NTC was founded in 1881 to extend telephone services into the counties outside London where the first telephones had appeared just three years earlier. The NTC played an important role in the rapid development of communications across Britain but it ceased to trade on 31 December 1911 when all commercial telephone services were taken over by the General Post Office.