HISTORY OF COLCHESTER CORPORATION WATER WORKS. 23
sewers were laid. Owing to the advance of medical and sanitary
science, and the increased knowledge of zymotic and other
water-borne diseases, these springs, which rise or flow under the
present inhabited town, were finally abandoned for domestic
use in 1890, but are still retained for non-domestic purposes, for
supplying the locomotives, &c., at Colchester station. They
include the springs in the neighbourhood of the water works
yard, viz., Clark's Meadow Spring and the Sheepen Spring, to be
hereafter referred to. The spring in the railway cutting already
mentioned is not at present utilized.
In or about the year 1860, the late Mr. Peter Bruff discovered
the existence of a very strong gravel spring just south of Sheepen
Farm on the south side of the valley, from the same plateau
of gravel which is also thrown out by the London-clay. This was
brought home by him to the Balkern Hill Works, to supplement
the then existing spring supply, but in or about 1880, by the
advice of the Corporation's Consulting Engineer, the late Mr.
Edward Easton, the spring was abandoned, and immediately
taken possession of to supply Colchester Station by the G.E.
Railway. As it did not yield sufficient water for their purpose,
it was given up a few years later. Through the foresight of Mr.
Bland, it is again in possession of the Corporation. In 1905, I
had the pleasure of bringing it home to Balkern Hill for the
second time, to supplement the non-domestic supply. It is
reported to have yielded some 100,000 gallons per day in Dec.
1879, but in the summer of 1904 the yield was about 70,000
gallons, but in this case, as in the case of all these gravel
springs, the yield varies as the rainfall.
In 1850, to supplement the then existing spring supply, the
late Mr. Bruff, who was engineer and part owner of the water
works, conceived the idea of sinking a well into the clay, and
boring through the Woolwich and Reading beds, and Thanet
Sands, into the chalk formation; so important did he consider
the work at the time, that he communicated a paper thereon to
the Institute of Civil Engineers, in 1859 (vol. xix., pp. 38 and 39),
and which was one of the early papers on water works read before
that Society. Particulars of this well and bore hole have since
been extracted therefrom, and reported in the Geological Memoir
Colchester (1880) by Mr. W. H. Dalton and Mr. Whitaker,
wherein it is stated that the rest level of the water was five feet