This year the first national water strike has brought home to many of us just how dependent we are on a regular water supply requiring no greater effort than the turn of a tap.  Spare a thought, then, for our forebears, who had to rely on more rudimentary methods of supplying the water that was so necessary for all aspects of daily life.  Of course, a river or stream was normally a prerequisite for the founding of a village community.  Normally, but not always; and with due respect to those who fervently believe that the river Effra or one of its tributaries once flowed through our village, there is no real evidence to support this.  A Mr. James, appointed to survey the whole Dulwich estate in 1806, reported: "From the range of alluvial hills dividing Surrey from Kent, the rains form an intermittent stream, the course of which divides this Estate from Lambeth and Streatham; and this is the only stream.  Indeed, a want of water appears the only inconvenience the Estate is subject to".

Writing of this watercourse, which ran behind the back gardens in South Croxted and Croxted Road, as he had known it is the 1830's, John Ruskin referred to it in his memoirs as "a slender rivulet, boasting little of its brightness - for there are no springs in Dulwich - yet fed purely enough by the rain and morning dew".  In days of yore it was known, not very flatteringly, as 'the great slough', to distinguish it from 'the Common Sewer', or 'Shore', which was the name usually given to another watercourse which flowed diagonally across the estate (From near Cox's Walk to Herne Hill, crossing College and Gallery Roads just behind the Old College), but this too had no natural spring supplying it, and therefore cannot correctly be described as a stream, let alone a river.  This is confirmed by the oldest maps of the estate, which show short stretches of this water-course twisting and turning as a stream might be expected to do, but other sections of it are straight, and were obviously created artificially.  Sometimes, just to confuse us, the term 'Common Sewer' was applied indiscriminately to any subtantial stretch of ditch on the estate.  In addition to the many orders for scouring this 'Common Sewer', there are occasional references to actual digging of new (or renewed) sections of ditch, up to 4' wide by 3' deep.  "But", those of you who are still not convinced may be asking, "what about Belair lake, or the Mill Pond, or the lake at the foot of Sunray Ave- nue? What are these if not Effra tributaries?"  Well, there are other explanations for each of them, which you may find persuasive if not conclusive.

Taken chronologically, the Mill Pond must come first. Oddly enough, this was considerably larger a century ago than today, a fact which again is borne out by the old maps. The probable reason was the landscaping earlier this century of the south and east sides, which now slope gently down to the water's edge.  'The Mill Pond' is act- ually a misnomer, since the mill which used to stand on Dulwich Common (on the site of the North Block of the College) was a wind- mill, not a watermill, and the pond had no connection with it other than proximity.  An inspection of the surrounding landscape, re- inforced by a study of the contours on a large-scale Ordnance Survey map - an exercise which, it may be said in passing, disposes of several of the alleged 'lost streams of Dulwich', since water doesn't flow uphill! - leaves one in no doubt that the Mill Pond is not a natural formation. Water, other than precipitation, has never flowed into or out or it, except through man-made channels.  What, then, was its original purpose?  The answer seems to be that until the mid-18th century it was not a pond at all, but a pit from which clay to supply the Tile Kiln (now Pond Cottages, a few yards away) was dug.  It is likely that it had been worked out and water-logged by 1758, when William Levens took over the Tile Kiln, and isn't mentioned in his lease.  A mere three years later, however, we find Mr Edward Russell being given permission to lease "the shapeless pond"  (the first reference to it as such), so that he and his friends could fish in it, on his undertaking to fence it off, give it a regular rectangular shape, and dig it deeper, "thereby becoming more useful to supply the Public with Water".  One property which later benefited from this provision was Bell House, since we know from Ann Wright's lease of 1811 that she was permitted to channel water to her house from the Mill Pond "through the Pipe or Plug already in the same".

The lake in 'Belair' is more persistently claimed as being a spur of the Effra, but again there are other practical reasons for its exist- ence.  There may well have been a pond of sorts there for centuries, although it isn't mentioned in any lease of the property, and certainly didn't have its present elongated shape.  The man responsible for that was John Willes, who started building 'Belair' in 1781.  Although we cannot be sure that he carried out his plan, he certainly intended to use the clay excavated from the site to make bricks for use in the building, as suggested to him by William Oxlade, who by then ran the Tile Kiln.  If he did, then the present ornamental lake is probably no more than the remnant of those excavations, suitably landscaped. In 1805 it was referred to as "the Sheet of Water". The same explanation may well apply to the lake at the foot of Sun- ray Avenue, although here the man responsible was Richard Shawe, the solicitor who defended Warren Hastings and who used his fee in building the mansion 'Casino' and laying out an estate for it at the very end of the 18th century.  Again, there is no mention, prior to Shawe, of there ever having been any lake or pond on the property.  Shawe referred to it as a 'Canal', and in August 1800 wrote to the Master of the College, Thomas Allen, requesting a stock of fish for his Canal "if any can be spared from any of the College ponds".  These are the largest ponds in the area of any antiquity, but there were (and are) many smaller ponds dotted about the locality, in some cases serving individual properties, in others lying at the conjunction of two or more fields, for watering cattle and the like.  The positions of these ponds are clearly shown on the 1806 Estate Map. The largest of them lay in the centre of the village, on the east side of the High Street, and was known as the Long Pond, for the very good reason that it was about 450 feet long.  According to tradition, it was dug as a reservoir on the orders of James Allen, Master of the College from 1721 to 1746 and founder of what is now J.A.G.S.  Although Allen may perhaps have been responsible for enlarging it, and planting a screen of chestnut trees, the evidence indicates that there had been a pond there for many centuries before he came on the scene.  It is referred to as 'Lane's Pond' in 1559 ('Launnes ponde' is another version), and the Lane family's connection with Dulwich went back to the end of the 14th century.  The pond probably supplied a large number of nearby properties with domestic water, so one can understand the concern of the manor court jury when, in 1610, it enjoined Robert Starkey to enclose the footway by his house with a hedge or fence, to prevent the effluent from his barn seeping into Lane's Pond.  Indeed, appalling though it is for us to contemplate such matters, the lack of any clear distinction between watercourses and drainage channels, and the fact that the latter often flowed into the same ponds which fed the former, must have constituted a considerable health hazard for our ancestors, had they but known it.  By the 1830s the numerous outbreaks of cholera in urban areas had alerted local residents to the risks.  One of these, a Mr Hopkins, wrote in September 1827 suggesting that the state of the Long Pond probably accounted "for the fever heard of at this time of year", and in 1829 he appealed to the College not to supply the hamlet with water taken from the Pond.  In 1834 Mr. Aylwin of Lake House wrote to the College com- plaining of "attacks in the Head and Stomach, of a strange and unusual kind", caused, as he supposed, by the "miasmatic effluvia" arising from the Long Pond. Eventually the hints were taken, and in 1859 the Pond was cleaned out, drained of its water (200,000 gallons, sold to the Lambeth Water Company for £10), filled up with spoil from the Southern High Level Metropolitan Sewer, and turfed over.  Mains drainage had arrived, and not before time.

In addition to the many ponds, we can assume that a number of Dulwich houses had wells for their domestic water supply.  We know of one, sunk by William Kay in th grounds of Hall Place (in Park Hall Road), as it is referred to in correspondence between him and the College in 1789.  Kay also had an elongated pond on the south side of Hall Place, which may at one time have extended around the house, or at least part of the way.  It is referred to in 17th century leases as a moat, but it is likely to have been purely ornamental, as is the T-shaped pond in the grounds of 'Oakfield', opposite the Mill Pond. There was, however, at least one well in Dulwich worthy of note, as it was a major factor in the success of the public house known as 'The Green Man' (now 'The Grove Tavern') in the mid- 18th century.  In 1739 the lessee of 'The Green Man' was William Cox, whose father John had run it before him, and who was later to be succeeded in turn by his own son Francis and grandson William.  So-called 'Dulwich Waters' had been sold on the streets of London for about a hundred years - a pamphlet dated 1678 in the Guildhall Library relates "Strange and Lamentable News from Dulledg Wells" about a street-vendor of such water who had battered his own son to death - but the well which produced them was, in fact, on the other side of the hill, in Sydenham.  According to a contemporary account (by Prof. John Martyn, F.R.S., who was present when it was dug), Cox required the well "for the service of his house, there being no spring of good water near it".  He dug down to a depth of 60 feet, but as no water appeared covered up the well and left it. On re-opening it the following Spring, 1740, he and Prof. Martyn found 25' of water "of a sulphureous smell and taste", although these qualities fortunately disappeared after a few days' exposure.  The water from these (properly so-called) 'Dulwich Wells', Blanch informs us, had "brisk purgative and diuretic" properties.  'The Green Man' closed its doors in the 1790's, and in about 1825 the building itself was demolished, but the well was still there, and the famous Dr Webster tested its waters, which he found "decidedly chalybeate". Webster, possibly the last person to have drunk from the Dulwich Wells before they dried up, might have been amused by the irony that the fountain in the village, which was erected to his memory in 1877, has now suffered the same fate.

[First published in July 1983 Dulwich Society Newsletter No. 61]