We live in a world where most utility services are delivered by either some form of State controlled organisation or a Government mandated monopoly. The latter might well be a code for ‘Yorkshire Water’, in this locality. It was not always thus, and whilst it is fair to say that without Government stepping in, so to speak, provision of essential supplies like water and sewage might not be universally available. Also of course history documents many instances of water born diseases like cholera and typhoid, which led, often slowly, to great changes in provision. I’m thinking the ‘Great Stink, 1858’ in Victorian London which prompted action on a massive scale to sort out London’s sewage problems, leaving the engineer responsible for sorting out the mess, Joseph Bazalgette as a household name for centuries to come.
How does this figure in an article about Parlington? Well the Gascoigne family over many centuries managed their own supply of water. Recently I came across a newly created digital archive of aerial photographs, held at Cambridge University. My first instinct was to see if there were any aerial shots of Parlington and I was lucky to discover two oblique views taken from south of the Hall looking beyond to the Gardens House, Home Farm, and the Stallion Pens. Here, albeit only in a low resolution, was a photograph showing the water tower which stood in the north east corner of the first walled pen, the most southerly. Whilst it was known that a tower existed no photograph has ever been discovered which showed it.
I had found a reference to the tower in a book from the 1950’s titled, ‘Follies & Grottos’, the author, Barbara Jones, whilst annotating the Triumphal Arch gave a brief description of the tower as it was seen from near the arch. ‘…is a square six-storey red brick castellated water-tower with white stone dressings.’ The water from the tower supplied the Hall with clean fresh water for all the household. Also, reputedly, the organ in the entrance hall was powered by the water pressure, and I believe the fountain in the centre of the garden may well have benefitted from the high pressure. There we have it, a tower of some 60 feet or so with a turret that would have dominated the landscape and given delightful views over the estate, gone but not quite forgotten. The photograph is of the entrance at the south west corner, to the Stallion Pen in which the tower stood.