DRAINAGE

By 1851 the population of Bordesley and Deritend was 23,175, with a high death rate counterbalanced by a high birth rate and immigration. The worst areas were those nearest the Rea. Those residents who could moved away from that 'morass of filth', leaving the courts and alleys of the valley to the poorest. William Hamper the antiquary lived in Deritend House early in the century but by 1846 when Apollo Gardens closed due to stench and smoke there were no well-to-do inhabitants left within smelling distance of the mile-long stagnant pool that stretched upstream from Duddeston millweir, constantly fed by untreated sewage from both banks. The slums north of St. Andrew's were said by Robert Rawlinson in his famous report of 1848 to be 'abounding in ignorance, immorality, and crime'.

Extreme poverty and terrible conditions were normal. Water came from shallow wells polluted by surface drainage and adjacent cesspits and middens. 'The stagnant filth and putrid accumulations in the several parts of Deritend' were 'a disgrace to civilisation'. In 1852 a great flood spread polluted water and waste into every cellar and parlour on the valley floor. The three Streets Commissions had begun the work of providing main sewers: having belatedly acquired their powers, the Corporation pushed ahead with the task of diverting drainage into brick sewers which debouched into the Tame at Lower Saltley. Duddeston weir and Cooper's Mill were removed, and some improvement of the river channel was made to ensure that future floods would pass downstream without inundating valley dwellings. Drainage and river works are more fully detailed in the two essays below.

The Rea-Cole watershed bisects Bordesley, lying roughly along Larches Street, on a line from Palmerston Road to Oakley/Cyril Roads, and along Grange Road and Green Lane. Drainage west therefrom was ultimately to the Rea, and subsidiary drains were laid down the hill to the main sewer on that river's west side. Eastward there was no provision of main drains. The Muntz Street district drained directly into Hol Brook, and from 1871 there were complaints about pollution of the Cole thereby. In 1885 work began on the conversion of the brook into a covered sewer, and the Cole West Sewer was made to connect with the sewage farms east of Saltley Works; completed a decade later.

Connection of many new houses to sewers and provision of flushing water-closets was delayed both by the shortage of water and by the difficulty of disposal of solid wastes: ultimately 2000 acres of Tameside meadows were in rotational use as sewage farms. Not until the introduction of bacterial filtration methods at Saltley and Minworth was the latter problem solved. Meanwhile canals were used to transport night soil and refuse to tips at the Borough's boundaries, e.g. the Cole bank east of Little Hey Farm. By 1998 destructors were in operation at Montagu and Montgomery Streets.

Index