Ipswich was one of the first towns in the country to enjoy a piped supply of clean fresh drinking water, initially to conduits (taps) in the street but later directly into homes, writes John Norman, of The Ipswich Society.

There were two reasons why Ipswich was in at the beginning, firstly the monasteries had both the demand for and the wherewithal to construct supply pipes and, secondly, Ipswich is blessed with a natural water filtration system.

The Augustinian Priory of St Peter and St Paul, founded in the late 12th Century, was situated close to St Peter’s church in what is now College Street. Residential accommodation for dozens of monks required a regular supply of drinking water. Traditionally the monks would have carried it from a spring, a well or from a local stream but here there was a natural supply oozing from Stoke Hill on the other side of the river. A supply pipe was required. This lead pipe started in the hillside below St Mary’s Stoke, crossed the river in the shallows upstream of Stoke bridge and into the priory. Evidence suggests it was in place by the late 14th Century. This supply later became a source of water for the Stoke Waterworks Company (supplying St Peter’s parish).

The monks at Blackfriars almost certainly had a piped water supply discharging into a fountain in the garth, the garden in the middle of the cloisters. Evidence suggests the supply was from the Cauldwell (Cold Well) estate on the hillside further east. Although frowned upon by the monks it was the habit of parishioners to tap into this pipe and insert quills (smaller pipes for their own individual supply).

In 1569 the corporation acquired the buildings at Blackfriars to establish a workhouse, a facility that became Christ’s Hospital, endorsed by Letters Patent from Elizabeth I in 1572. Excavation at Blackfriars have revealed that there was a feature in the garth and it sounds rather romantic to imagine this as a fountain, continuously issuing fresh cold water for drinking, cooking and washing.

There is no documentary or archaeological evidence of where the Augustinian canons at Holy Trinity Priory (Christchurch Mansion) obtained their supply but there are multiple springs issuing from the slopes of Christchurch Park. A conduit from one of these ran into the town centre and terminated in a faucet at Conduit House on the corner of Tavern and St Lawrence Street, (there is a plaque high up on the building to mark the spot).

The second reason Ipswich has an almost limitless supply of fresh drinking water is the geology. In very simple terms Ipswich is founded on chalk, overlaid with clay (London Crag) which, above the sloping valley sides, is then overlaid with sand and gravel. Rain water passes through the filtration level (the gravel) which naturally removes detritus leaving clean water to emerge from the spring some way down the slope. Very early on in the life of the town the water was described as being “quite free from deposit, colourless, inodorous, and with agreeable taste”. Thomas Cobbold had been shipping Holywells water to his brewery in Harwich (founded 1723) until he realised that it would be more sensible to move the brewery to Ipswich (1746).

Before the houses were built in Bolton Lane there was a water house just inside the park, close to the toll house controlling access to Westerfield and Tuddenham Turnpike Roads. It consisted of a single room with a large tank, constantly supplied with fresh water from an adjacent spring, the overflow from which ran down Bolton Lane and no doubt as the stream flowing along Upper and Lower Orwell Street. This stream was difficult to cross in Orwell Place so stepping stones were used and the area became the stepples or the Wash.

Cobbold, who had moved his brewery from Harwich to Ipswich to be adjacent to the wholesome water supply of Holywells sold the water to some 600 householders, expanded this side of the business and established an additional source of (ground) water north of St Clement’s Church in what was then Back Street (Edward White’s map 1867). The street later became Waterworks Street and the business was purchased by the corporation in 1892 to become the Ipswich Corporation Waterworks (ICWW).

There was debate as to whether they could also take control of the Stoke Waterworks Company, by then owned by the Eastern Counties Railway, which they did. In 1973 ICWW became part of Anglian Water Authority, one of ten regional water management companies. Anglian Water was privatised in 1989.