LIQUID ASSETS an Analysis of the Supply and Control of Water in Bristol in the Sixteenth Century, Based on Entries in the Mayor’S Audit Books 1532-1574

LIQUID ASSETS An Analysis of the Supply and Control of Water in Bristol in the Sixteenth Century, based on entries in the Mayor’s Audit Books 1532-1574 Jocelyn Davis A dissertation submitted to the University of Bristol in accordance with the requirements of the degree of MA in History in the Faculty of Arts, September 2015 Word count: 14,997 Abstract This dissertation examines Bristol’s systems of clean water provision and disposal of waste water during the sixteenth century, based primarily on detailed quantitative analysis of entries from the Mayor’s Audit Books from 1532 to 1571. After a brief methodology, the material is considered in four chapters. Chapter 1 looks at the medieval background of the water systems and discusses the evidence in the primary source for the technologies used in supplying water to the centre of Bristol. Chapter 2 analyses the data for the maintenance of the pipes, looking at fluctuations in spending. Chapter 3 examines the specific evidence for control over the access to water, and Chapter 4 considers the provision for disposal of waste and rain water. The conclusion sums up the findings of this study and considers the implications of the impact of the Dissolution of the Monasteries and attitudes to urban administration, charity and civic pride on the water supply of Bristol, also highlighting further questions raised by this study. Declaration I declare that the work in this dissertation was carried out in accordance with the Regulations of the University of Bristol. The work is original, except where indicated by special reference in the text, and no part of the dissertation has been submitted for any other degree. Any views expressed in the dissertation are those of the author. Signed: Date: Acknowledgments The suggestion that this topic might return interesting results came from Dr Evan Jones, for whose guidance and encouragement I am most grateful. I also wish to thank the members of staff at the Bristol Record Office for their help, and Gareth Dickinson for proof-reading. 2 Contents Page List of Figures.................................................................................................................. 4 Introduction...................................................................................................................... 5 Methodology.................................................................................................................... 10 Chapter One – The Supply of Clean Water..................................................................... 12 Chapter Two – The Maintenance of the Supply.............................................................. 21 Chapter Three – Provision and Control of Access.......................................................... 31 Chapter Four – The Removal of Waste Water................................................................ 39 Conclusion....................................................................................................................... 46 Appendix One – Tables................................................................................................... 50 Appendix Two – Transcriptions...................................................................................... 57 Bibliography..................................................................................................................... 324 3 List of Figures Page Figure 1 - Bristol’s Medieval Water Supply.................................................................... 15 Figure 2 - Expenditure on the Quay Pipe by quarter........................................................ 20 Figure 3 - Expenditure on the Allhallow Pipe by quarter................................................. 24 Figure 4 - Expenditure on the Gaunt’s Pipe by year......................................................... 26 Figure 5 - The expenditure of the three pipes compared................................................... 29 Figure 6 - Comparison of the expenditure on pipes as a percentage of total spending..... 30 Figure 7 – Expenditure on damage and security................................................................ 33 Figure 8 - Expenditure on locks for pipes.......................................................................... 35 Figure 9 - The Author cleaning a perforated lead cap on a water pipe, Gammel Strand, Copenhagen 2014................................................................................. 38 Figure 10 - Town expenditure on waste water – ‘gowts’, gutters and privies.................... 42 4 INTRODUCTION When John Leland visited Bristol in around 1545, in addition to describing the castle, gates, churches, bridges and harbour of the city, he additionally singled out the conduits both within and outside of the walls, and whether or not they were protected by a ‘faire castellet’1: which would have been elegant basins and canopies of stone.2 He had also made a point of describing the conduits and conduit houses which provided water to a number of other towns large and small around the country which he had inspected on his travels, such as Newcastle, Southampton, Gloucester, and Ludlow.3 Clearly he had considered such systems to be important and noteworthy features of the cities and towns of England in the middle of the sixteenth century. Water is an intrinsic necessity to human life. It has always been one of our most precious resources, and throughout history it has been seen as requiring careful management both of supply and waste removal.4 Of particular importance as a topographical factor in the situation and growth of settlements, it is surprising, therefore that comparatively little seems to have been written on the subject for the post-Roman periods. Colin Platt’s 1976 work on ‘The English Medieval Town’ made no reference even to the necessity of siting a town near a river or stream, let alone any more elaborate arrangements for providing water;5 while Schofield and Vince’s more recent archaeological study of medieval towns devotes a mere page to the topic.6 In fact Roberta Gilchrist wrote in 1992 that archaeologists should ‘pay closer attention to evidence for... the treatment of water supply and waste disposal’,7 and Paolo Squatriti in 2002 deemed there to be ‘few studies of the history of water and its management in the European Middle Ages’.8 While more recently historians have indeed begun to explore aspects of water 1 L. Toulmin Smith (ed.) The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the Years 1535-1543 Parts IX-XI (London 1910) p.92 2 Alfred Harvey, Bristol: A Historical and Topographical Account of the City (London: 1906) p.221 3 John Chandler (ed.) John Leland’s Itinerary: Travels in Tudor England (Gloucester: 1993, revised edn. 1998) pp.xxx-xxxi; L. Toulmin Smith (ed.) The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the Years 1535-1543, 5 vols. (London: 1906-10). 4 Peter Warren ‘Foreword’ in Barber, Geraldine and Tertia Barnett (eds.) Water in Archaeology (Wessex Water, 1995) 5 Colin Platt, The English Medieval Town (London, 1976). 6 John Schofield and Alan Vince, Medieval Towns: The Archaeology of British Towns in their European Setting (London, 2003) 7 Roberta Gilchrist, ‘Christian bodies and souls: the archaeology of life and death in later medieval hospitals’ in Steven Bassett (ed.), Death in Towns: Urban responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100-1600 (Leicester: 1992) p.116 8 Paolo Squatriti, Water and Society in Early Medieval Italy, AD 400-1000 (Cambridge, 2002) p.2 5 management in the medieval period,9 where it has been studied, as Bond noted in 2001, writers have tended to pay more attention to the water management of the monasteries than that of the “secular world, because it is usually better documented and more closely focussed”.10 Where civic management of water has been examined, it has predominantly been focussed on the larger towns, and in England predominantly on London, notably by Derek Keane in his paper on the water supply prior to 1300,11 and Mark Jenner who has examined the transition of the control of water from local government to private companies in the seventeenth century.12 While London’s water supply is often described as the earliest “documented provision of fresh water in pipes in a medieval European city”, it has been noted that several other towns and cities had piped water earlier still.13 Contrary to Richard Holt, who maintained that ‘most urban authorities [failed] to establish more sophisticated supplies of clean water’ and who counted only three towns, London, Southampton and Gloucester, with such supplies,14 John S. Lee’s paper of 2014 has discussed forty-six towns with piped water. He argues that ‘the growth in piped supplies by civic bodies in the later Middle Ages reflects the importance of charitable provision and the role of civic government’,15 and concludes that the extent of public water engineering has to date been considerably understated.16 Although water as a resource ‘has as yet not been included in any cost of living index in British economic history’,17 one area where its importance has been further considered is in the field of health and disease. Towns are recognised as having been ‘centres of disease....which waged a steady war of attrition on urban populations’,18 and it has been noted that town governments did take measures to reduce the risk of contagion ‘by ordering the scouring of streets and by 9 John S. Lee, ‘Piped water supplies managed by civic bodies in medieval English towns’ Urban History 41 (2014), p.370 10 James Bond, ‘Monastic Water

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