FENNY COMPTON WATER COMPANY LTD

Archive

Photographs and documents gathered over the company's history.

Historical

Black and white photograph of a man in a hat and suit leaning over the handle of a cast iron hand pump, with a small child in a light dress standing at the spout holding a metal bucket. A wooden picket fence runs across behind them. A cast iron hand pump with a curved spout, standing on a concrete base inside a curved brick alcove. The brickwork is weathered and patched, with moss along the joints.

The Village

A round stone tower with a conical roof standing on the crest of a grassy hill, with sheep grazing across the slope below it and a pale sky streaked with cloud behind. A long thatched cottage of golden stone with two brick chimneys, seen across a garden of shrubs and rough grass, framed by trees on both sides with a strip of road in the foreground. A row of stone houses with slate roofs under a light covering of snow, seen along the line of the roofs, with a church tower and spire rising behind them through bare branches.

2017

A black moulded plastic lid, dusty and marked, sitting inside an open timber enclosure built from bolted boards. A small white fitting stands on top of the lid, and grass surrounds the enclosure. Two men working at a pale timber post and rail fence enclosing a patch of rough grass on a hillside. A small brick structure stands inside the enclosure, with a watering can and tools on the grass beside them. A strip of mown grass between tall hedges with an open brick-lined chamber in the foreground, its heavy cover laid back on the grass. A socket set, gloves, hoses and a timber box are spread across the grass, and two men stand talking at the far end. An empty black plastic tank set inside a timber frame, seen from above, with a little water in the bottom and a white pipe fitting at one corner. A brick-lined chamber containing blue pipework is open in the grass alongside. An open brick-lined chamber in a strip of mown grass between hedges, its metal cover lifted off and laid beside it. Three men stand talking near a second chamber further up, with open countryside visible beyond the hedge.

2019

A filter housing with a blue plastic cap holding a discoloured brown cartridge, connected into copper pipework with a lever valve. Plastic containers stand on either side. A stainless steel cylinder mounted horizontally beneath a metal control box on a white wall, connected to copper pipe and a braided flexible hose. The box carries a blue manufacturer's label and a rating plate. A deep, narrow trench cut through a grass field with a length of pipe lying in muddy water at the bottom. A tracked excavator stands at the head of the trench with its operator in a high-visibility jacket, and a man in wellington boots watches from the edge. A trench dug through grass with a pipe running along the bottom, partly submerged in muddy brown water. A blue valve fitting with a handwheel is joined into the pipe, and a cable runs from it up out of the trench.

2020 — Road Leak

A long trench opened along the edge of a road beside a stone building, with a blue plastic water pipe laid in the bottom in standing water. Red barriers and a mini excavator stand at the far end. A patch of fresh black tarmac laid in an irregular shape across a road and pavement beside a stone house. Red barriers and parked vehicles stand further up the road.

Documents

A page of handwritten copperplate headed "Memorandum of Association of the Fenny Compton Water Company Limited", setting out five numbered clauses, on creased and folded paper. A handwritten ruled table headed "Names addresses and descriptions of Subscribers" with a narrow right-hand column for the number of shares taken by each, listing nine names against figures from fifty down to ten, totalled at 150, above the line "Dated this 28th day of September 1866". A hand-drawn plan in pencil and ink on yellowed paper, showing a hill marked "Quarry Hill" with a spring below it, a small service tank, a dashed line labelled "line of existing water pipes to reservoir" running beside a road marked "Main Road" to a small black rectangle marked "Reservoir", and the road continuing "to village". A bog is marked at the left as the source of the existing water supply. Two pencil annotations read "New polythene pipe laid 1967" and "All new polythene pipe laid through spinney 1975". A typed sheet is visible beneath the plan. A typed legal undertaking addressed to the Fenny Compton Water Company from Horace William Thomas Smith, farmer, granting an option over waste water from a spring on Quarry Hill, with a red sixpenny embossed revenue stamp at the head, four numbered conditions, an ink signature, and the date "this sixteenth day of August 1928". A hand-drawn plan on yellowed paper overlaps the lower part of the sheet. The outside of a folded legal document, typed in five short centred lines reading "DATED 16th August 1928", "MR. H. W. T. SMITH", "to", "THE FENNY COMPTON WATER CO" and "OPTION", with rust marks at the left edge where a pin or clip has been.