We conclude our look at the records of Wallingford Borough with the unglamorous but vital role it played in public health and housing, not to mention the sewers and cemeteries!

Public Health 

The council was responsible for monitoring outbreaks of serious illness and enforcing quarantine. The register of infectious diseases, 1911-1949 (WA/RH1/1) includes names, ages, addresses, diseases and doctors of each patient. Includes notes on supplies of milk and water, school attended by child patients, the supposed source of infection, and place of isolation.

Housing the poor 

A large section of the collection relates to the important work of the Borough Surveyor (WA/S). The Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890 permitted local authorities to build cheap houses to rent to working class families and individuals. Wallingford had its first four such dwellings by 1914, rising to 12 in 1915. A series of Acts from 1919 onwards extended the council's powers and made the provision of council housing a statutory requirement.

The Housing Act 1919 gave councils the power to build council houses for rent, subsidised by government grants. They also undertook slum clearance of the worst rental properties following the Housing Acts of 1930 and 1935, which first encouraged and then required all these slum properties to be demolished. The government provided subsidies based on the number of persons rehoused as a result.

The register of houses in Slum Clearance Areas lists the following for each property affected: the address; name and address of owner, lessee and mortgagee; name of tenant; number of working class residents to be rehoused; date of displacement of the same, date fixed for vacation, date fixed for completion of demolition, and date of demolition. The Wallingford slums were in Church Lane, Kine Croft, St Leonard’s Lane, Union Terrace, and Wood Street.

Wallingford built four Assisted Housing Schemes on sites in Station Road and St John's Road, and we have records of these 1914-1953. There are also plans of the municipal housing developments in Wallingford, 1945-1961, and files for the building work, 1935-1954 (WA/SH2-3). These relate to houses in Andrew Road, Clapcot Way, St George’s Road, St Nicholas Road, Sinodun Road and Wilding Road.

Clean water and sewage 

The sanitation records, specifically records of the waterworks (WA/SS1), are particularly interesting. They start with a report by W A Ripley of Ripley & Simmonds, Bracknell, on a proposed scheme to supply drinking water to Wallingford, 25 April 1879. This reported on springs at Mongewell Mill, Northstoke Mill, and Ewelme, all in Oxfordshire; and a site for a well and storage tank near Wallingford Gas Works.

Until 1891 there was no centralised sewage system in Wallingford, with the majority of houses relying on private cesspools. A new sewage works was erected in 1891 between Old Moor Lane and Mill Brook. The physical situation of the town was said to be unsuitable for a traditional sewage system if it was not permitted to drain sewage into the River Thames, and the Shone System was adopted. This system, invented by Isaac Shone (1836-1918) before 1884, collected sewage at several collection points, where a pneumatic ejector raised it to send it by a compressed air system to a treatment and dispersal point known as an outfall. Rain and other clean water was dispersed naturally. The records of the establishment of a sewage system provide an unusually detailed record of how such a system was established.

The mayor issued a pamphlet in 1890 describing the background to the proposals for a new sewage works and the technical difficulties. He referred to ‘the horrid night carts [which would have collected excrement from the streets], and the humiliating shifts to which too many of our inhabitants are forced’, and to the better sewage arrangements in other towns, including Abingdon as an example. A hydro-pneumatic system was chosen, which used underground vacuum tubes to transport the sewage from homes to the works. The location of this sewage works was controversial – the first site selected was outside the borough in rural Brightwell. Understandably the residents of Brightwell were less keen on this solution to the town’s problem, and eventually a site in Old Moor Lane was chosen.

After the new works opened in 1891, individual home owners could then apply to have their houses connected to the system. The sewers were extended further in the 1930s.

An amusing (now - it must have been horrific at the time) item is a pamphlet produced by the Town Clerk of Oxford in 1870. It reveals widespread contamination of the River Thames, and suggested that those constructing privies should incorporate a wheeled tub beneath the seat so that 'the house ashes' [the polite term for human excrement] might be easily wheeled to the garden or collected by the public scavenger. A wheelie-toilet rather than a wheelie-bin!

And to bury the dead 

Death of course comes to us all, and the Council acted as a Burial Board for the borough of Wallingford and the extra-burghal liberty of Clapcot. In 1935 burial matters were transferred to the Wallingford and Sotwell Joint Burial Committee, which had representatives from Sotwell Parish Council as well as Wallingford Borough Council, and the Wallingford Burial District was expanded to include the whole area of Wallingford borough as extended by the Berks Review Order 1934 (including part of the ancient parish of Brightwell), plus Sotwell.

The cemetery they ran is in Castle Street, Wallingford, and opened in c.1861. It had consecrated (Church of England) and unconsecrated sections, and chapels for Church of England and nonconformists. A new cemetery site (apparently an extension) was acquired in 1919.

We do not have the burial registers here, but there is a partial set of grants of the right of burial, 1861-1944, and a good series of notices of interments, 1934-1959, plus correspondence of the Burial Committee, 1935-1949 (WA/UC), which may be helpful. Many of the surviving headstones have been photographed and transcribed on the Find a Grave website.

This concludes our look at the records of Wallingford Borough. We hope it may have inspired you to explore the town’s heritage!