Before Main Drainage

I don't remember the exact year but I do remember the major event of main drainage coming to the village and in particular Glebe Meadow where I lived. It was probably sometime mid 1960's prior to which we had two large sewers at the bottom of Glebe Meadow on an area that we call the grass. 

It was an area left over from building the houses of Glebe Meadow and it had a sand pit that was the remains of the building sand as this was the storage area during construction. On this area there were two large frying pan shaped sewers, constructed of brick and concrete. The handles of the frying pan shape structures were the sewerage inlet pipes leading from the rows of houses, one from the row on Bow Road side and one from the newer rows. One of the inlet pipes was square in construction and the other had a rounded top.

Believe it or not as kids we played on these sewers running along the inlet pipe constructions, the square shape much easier than the rounded top one. There were always lose concrete slabs on the top of the sewer where the tankers would drop pipes and suck out the sewerage every so often when they needed emptying. The whole village could smell when that happened!

There were always stories of kids who fell into the sewers and the threats of being thrown in them by the larger lads threatening us smaller kids!

Do you remember these constructions and better still do you have any photos or stories about them to share with us?

If you do, please mail them to john.gilham@mail.com