Early companies

Please note that this text is an extract from a reference work written in 1990.  As a result, some of the content may not reflect recent research, changes and events.

b) EARLY COMPANIES: The first piped water supply in the town was provided to privileged houses for just two hours a day from 1834 by the Brighton, Hove and Preston Waterworks Company, from a well and pumping-station in Lewes Road , now the site of Saunders Park. This source was extended in 1853 when the first ‘headings’ were cut. (Headings are tunnels driven parallel to the shoreline at a depth corresponding to sea-level, thereby intercepting the fissures within the chalk strata which are the natural drainage channels.)
However the intermittent supply was considered far from satisfactory, and in the same year of 1853 the Brighton, Hove and Preston Constant Water Service Company was founded. It absorbed the older company the following year, extending the supply to 7,000 homes, and in 1866 opened a large new waterworks at Goldstone Bottom which was extended in 1876 with the addition of a second beam-engine. (The Constant Service public house in Islingword Road, despite its sign, is named after this company which owned the nearby reservoir.)

Any numerical cross-references in the text above refer to resources in the Sources and Bibliography section of the Encyclopaedia of Brighton by Tim Carder.

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