No city can survive without water, and lots of it, and the history of Liquid London is astonishing.
doors: 7pm
While today we take the stuff for granted: turn a tap and it gushes out, it wasn't always so. For centuries the metropolis, one of the largest and richest cities in the world, struggled to keep its citizens hydrated with reliable, clean water.
From the elm-wood pipes of Tudor London via dragon-like early steam engines to Thames Water's blue tubes, where has our water come from? London historian Peter Stone tells of some of the most signifcant developments in the city's early hydration history - the London Bridge waterwoks and the contruction of the picturesque New River which was neither new nor a river but an extraordinary aqueduct completed in1613 to pipe fresh water into a polluted city.
The company that built it was one of the very first modern business corporations, and also one of the most profitable and the New River amazingly remains part of London's water supply today.
Journalist Nick Higham takes up the tale - from the 18th Century to the present day - and it’s a tale of technological and organisational breakthroughs; Chelsea Waterworks was the first in the world to filter the water it supplied its customers and the same technique is still used to purify two-thirds of London's drinking water.
But it is also a story of greed and complacency, high finance and low politics - for much of London's history water had to be rationed and one Victorian London water company deliberately cut off 2,000 households, even though it knew they had no alternative source of supply. Nick asks whether today's 21st century water companies are an improvement on their Victorian predecessors.
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Nick Higham is a British journalist, author and spent 30 years at the BBC as arts and media correspondent. His book Mercenary River: Private Greed, Publics Good: A History of London's Water received rave reviews. His interest in London’s water began with the New River, which originally ran to New River Head on the borders of Islington and Clerkenwell, within sight of the building housing the London Metropolitan Archives where much of the book was researched.
Peter Stone is a trustee of the Docklands History Group, based at the Museum of London Docklands. He has been writing about London’s history for over 20 years, online and in print, and his book The History of the Port of London is the most comprehensive study of London’s docks and wharves. Peter’s daily posts on social media are followed by tens of thousands of people and he has over a hundred articles on his website. He has recently begun producing videos that can be found here
