Surrey Street Pumping Station, Croydon

Surrey Street Pumping Station is a Grade II listed pumphouse in Croydon, South London, England, that was built in four phases. It is the site of a well that "had been more or less public ever since the town existed". It was opened by the Archbishop of Canterbury on 11 December 1851, making Croydon one of the first towns to have a combined water and sewage system under the Public Health Act 1848 (11 & 12 Vict. c. 63), and to Chadwick’s arterial-venous design. The water was pumped from the wells, up Park Hill to a cylindrical brick reservoir with a domed roof to provide a constant supply of fresh piped water. Prior to its opening, the inhabitants of Croydon used the river Wandle, streams and shallow wells, which were often contaminated by seepage from privies and cesspools. Parts of Norwood were served with water from the Lambeth Waterworks Company, a private company established by the Lambeth Waterworks Act 1785 (25 Geo. 3. c. 89). Soon after it opened, the pumping station was involved in a landmark legal case about the abstraction of water from wells. The opening coincided with a reduction of water in the river Wandle that had been predicted by the river's millers. They believed they had a strong case under riparian law that they should not be harmed by the abstraction. The Lords disagreed and determined on 27 July 1859 that "the course and direction of underground waters were considered too uncertain and too little known, to be the foundation of any (riparian) rights in them". Water levels in the river subsequently increased, suggesting the reason for the low levels in the river was a lack of rainfall. It is somewhat ironic that in 1912 Croydon objected to the abstraction of water at Purley by the East Surrey Water company for fear it would damage their supply.