Seething Wells Water
Surbiton’s Hidden Heritage

Anyone who has walked or driven along the Portsmouth Road, Seething Wells in Surbiton and past the old water works and reservoirs will have probably done so without realising the importance of these sites in the story of public health in Great Britain and the defeat of Cholera in this country and abroad.

A great deal of this story is visible to the naked eye, the water beds, engine houses and coal stores. There is also much that lies beneath our feet. Massive Victorian tunnels and pipes still exist under the ground, created to allow barges to deliver coal to pumping stations via rail. Massive pipes to take water from the ground breaking filter beds and more pipes to take this precious clean water into London.

These are no ordinary waterworks - these are the waterworks that allowed Dr John Snow to prove that Cholera was ‘waterborne’ and put an end to the outbreaks of the disease that haunted towns and cities.

During 2011 and early 2012 a group of local volunteers worked to find out about the story of Seething Wells Water, what it was, who worked there, why it is there and how it helped defeat King Cholera. Our website will tell you this story, and show you some of the original documents we used to find it.

Clean water

During the 19th century, the population of London grew and put pressure on the ancient sewage system and water supply. The Thames had become polluted with the city’s refuse. People and industry had been pouring it’s sewage, chemicals, dead animals into the river and gradually it became congested with pollution. People hoped the river would wash the refuse out to sea, but being tidal it just moved back and forth with the river flow.

Water companies were increasingly supplying residences with a direct water supply. But that supply was straight from the Thames. Popular feeling was that this water was not good for health. At that time people had started to look at water through microscopes but had not yet made the link between disease and dirty water.

Arthur Hassle In his Microscopic Examination of the Water Supplies to the Inhabitants of London in 1850, said:

“a portion of the inhabitants of the metropolis are made to consume, in some form or another, a portion of their own excrement, and moreover, to pay for the privilege.”

There was a demand for clean water. The Chelsea Water Company, experimented with a water filter bed at Pimlico in 1829. James Simpson was the engineer. But the Thames was so polluted that he believed the only way to get clean water was to filter it before it had become polluted. That is, to extract it up-stream and away from the centre of London.

Here a some more in depth articles produced by volunteer researchers for this project:

The Cholera and Clean Water

From Monster Soup to Clear and Bright

Opening of the new Lambeth Water Works at Seething Wells in 1852

Seething Wells

Seething Wells was a small area just outside Surbiton. There was not much there before 1848, except the main road from Kingston to Portsmouth, a few houses, pubs, a wharf and osier beds. This would be typical of what you would expect to see in a rural 19th century setting. Early maps call the area “Siden Wells” and show fields and farms.

There are some references to there being springs in the area. From at least the 18th century the spring had become “enclosed within a very old ivy covered well house containing a well and spring” (Ayliffe, 1914.36). The spring itself yielded “an abundant supply of water, whose hot waters were exploited medicinally, especially for opthalmia” (Biden, 1852. 34).

After lengthy negotiations, Lambeth Water Company bought land from the Earl of Lovelace at the end of 1849. Eviction notices were given to those living by the Thames at Long Ditton. The fate of the tenants is unknown. In all, as many as 200 people may have been cleared to make way for the works.