Raise a glass to Glasgow’s water pioneers

It was Sir Walter Scott who is said to have “discovered” it in his epic poem The Lady of the Lake, first published in 1810, and made it an early object of literary tourism.

Ever since then it has drawn visitors in their droves, arriving, as Henry Cockburn, one of Scott’s many awestruck fans, remarked in 1846, by omnibuses, gigs, cars and private carriages.

Even today the steamship which takes its name from the poem is fully booked, while its larger sister ship, the Sir Walter Scott, has a day off. What would Sir Walter, who died in 1832, have made of the idea to use the “pure soft water” of Loch Katrine to supply the burgeoning city of Glasgow? We will never know, but what we are sure of is that he was fiercely protective of the loch’s peerless attributes, the fusion of deep black water, tree-clad banks and hilly hinterland, which combine to form a picture which epitomises Highland romance. When, for instance, a landowner decided to chop down some of the finest weeping birches in the land, Scott threatened to shame him by raising a public subscription to save the trees. Would he have joined those, such as Archibald McLellan, the coachbuilder-turned-art collector who bequeathed to his fellow Glaswegians the McLellan Galleries, in vehemently opposing the scheme to bring water to Glasgow?

It is almost 150 years to the day since Loch Katrine began to supply the erstwhile Second City of the Empire with water. Chaperoning me on the two-hour trip down the narrow, eight-mile-long loch are three men whose combined knowledge of the history and science of the scheme is probably unparalleled.

Bill Black has spent many hours in his retirement (he worked as a “training professional”) digging in libraries and archives to tease out the story of how Loch Katrine was chosen above numerous other contenders and how an engineering feat which, it has been claimed, “surpasses the greatest of the Nine Famous Aqueducts which fed the city of Rome”, came into being.

Gus Conejo-Watt was the project manager for the latest Katrine water project, the £120 million Milngavie treatment works scheme which opened in 2007 and supplies water to 700,000 people in greater Glasgow. He probably knows where every pipe and pumping station is in the country.

Iain Young, meanwhile, is employed as a civil engineer by Scottish Water Solutions, of which Scottish Water is a majority shareholder and which is charged with improving the standard of Scotland’s water. Among the highlights of his career is the bridge over the Tagus in Lisbon, which he worked upon as an engineer.

Each of these engaging, modest men you might say has water on the brain. Consequently, the journey down the loch, which I first took as a schoolboy immersed in the adventures of Rob Roy -- whose stomping ground this was long before Scott adopted it -- is a lesson in engineering history leavened with anecdotes and gossip. From Trossachs Pier, about half a dozen miles from Aberfoyle, the Lady of the Lake bends round the loch to Stronachlachar where it berths briefly before returning to where it started. En route, Black points out Royal Cottage which Scottish Water recently sold to a buyer who wishes to remain anonymous. A more idyllic spot it would be hard to imagine. It was built especially for Queen Victoria who, accompanied by Prince Albert, came from Holyrood via Callander to the foot of Loch Katrine where they boarded the steamer Rob Roy which conveyed them down the loch to the cottage.

50 million gallons a day

A century and a half ago the weather was much worse than it is today. But the weather could not dampen the enthusiasm of those assembled to witness the inauguration of one of the great wonders of the Victorian age. Turning a handle to open one of three sluices, Queen Victoria released the impounded water into the aqueduct tunnel where it began its 34-mile journey to Glasgow. For the relatively modest sum of £700,000, Glasgow at last had a clean water supply it could depend on. Soon, some 50 million gallons of water a day were pouring into the city -- today it supplies 90 million each day. Moreover, as TC Smout, Scotland’s Historiographer Royal, has noted, it was the first such scheme to catch the public imagination. “For the first time in British history,” he wrote, “a city hitherto drinking from vile and disease-ridden wells” had brought fresh water from a country reservoir to serve the needs of its population.

The diversion of Loch Katrine’s water westwards marked the beginning of a new era in Glasgow’s often tortuous story. Water, as Black says, may be fundamental to our existence but it was a long time before the authorities recognised just how essential it was. Through his research he has traced the story back to medieval times when wells were dug to supplement what could be extracted from the Clyde and its tributaries. By the middle of the 17th century, when Glasgow had an estimated population of about 10,000, the council proposed a limited pipe supply from Bogle’s Well, a private source near the Gallowgate. First mooted in 1636, this did not come to fruition until 25 years later, a sign perhaps of the difficulties that lay ahead.

Nearly two centuries later not a lot had changed, at least in regard to the supply of water. Otherwise, however, virtually everything else had changed. Between 1775 and 1837, when Victoria ascended her throne, Scotland’s population had almost doubled. Nowhere was this more evident than in Glasgow, which by 1841 had grown to accommodate 275,000 people, a dozen times more than it had in 1775. Through the decades of the 19th century it grew at an even faster rate. Between 1831 and 1841, for example, it had grown by more than one third, far eclipsing Edinburgh which was now only half Glasgow’s size. From 1801 to 1901 the population grew tenfold.

People flocked from the Highlands into the city where every industry large and small was making its mark. For some this meant wealth and with it a higher standard of living, including private wells which offered supplies of unpolluted water. But for the vast majority of the population conditions were dire.

Tom Devine, writing in The Scottish Nation, noted that no other city in Britain could compare with Glasgow’s degree of human squalor. “As the reporter of the West of Scotland Handloom Weavers Commission famously observed: ‘I have seen degradation in some of its worse phases, both in England and abroad, but I can advisedly say that I do not believe until I visited the wynds of Glasgow that so large an amount of filth, crime, misery and disease existed in one spot in any civilised country.’”

In the crowded city centre, where there were several families to a room, there were no privies or drains. Often human waste was disposed of by emptying buckets from high windows into the street. Though this was a criminal offence, the lack of alternative options made the practice common. In 1849 alone 15 women were summoned to court for “the offence of emptying their soil buckets out of the window.” The smell grabbed the throat and the streets were rank with rubbish. The area between Argyle Street and the Clyde was remarkable for its dungheaps which the inhabitants created in part to pay for their rents.

“Thus,” wrote Dr Neil Arnott in 1840, “worse than wild animals, many of which withdraw at a distance to conceal their ordure, the dwellers in these courts had converted their shame into a kind of money by which their lodgings were to be paid.” The excrement was mixed with ash and the resulting mixture was collected by the “night soil” man in dung carts and sold to farmers. Urine, too, was sold, principally to the textile industry.

But such appalling conditions were by no means unusual. As far back as 1608 King James had complained that such actions were “nocht only uncumlie and uncivill, but lykwayis very dangerous in time of plaig and pestilence, and verie infective of itself.”

“The first toilet in Glasgow,” says Black, “was in 1800.” Yet by the middle of the inventive 19th century the situation had not improved much. On the contrary, to most witnesses it was a lot worse. “Scotland,” said one observer, “had a time-honoured tradition of dirt, both inside and outside the house; filth and squalor prevailed everywhere, but they reached their extreme in the towns.”

Falling disease rates

In hindsight, says Young, a supporter of Water Aid, the international charity which campaigns to bring clean water to the developing world, the relationship between insanitary living conditions, poisonous water and poor health may seem obvious, but it was not to many Victorians. “Put a well in the middle of a village,” says Young, “and that community starts to flourish. The water is the catalyst for everything.”

Even among the medical profession there was deep disagreement over the origins of such diseases as cholera and little understanding of how to tackle them. What could not be disputed, however, were the frequency of the outbreaks of disease and the number of people who died as a result. There were outbreaks of typhoid and cholera in 1831, 1847, 1848 and 1853, none of which was by any means confined to the working class. In these some 10,000 lives were lost. Was the dire quality of water a factor? A study in 1849 suggested it surely was. All the three men on the Lady of the Lake will say is that after the opening of the Loch Katrine scheme the death rate dropped markedly. “The water wasn’t the only factor,” says Conejo-Watt, “but it was a significant factor. The Clyde [from which most of the water was taken] was an open sewer.”

How Glasgow came to have what is often described as the finest drinking water in the country is a complicated tale, mired in politics and beset by private interests, prejudice and municipal lethargy. Over the years a multitude of schemes was mooted, companies formed and acts of parliament passed. Some were instigated by entrepreneurs hellbent on amassing a fortune, others were motivated by altruism and philanthropy. In 1804, for example, William Harley, by all accounts “one of Glasgow’s most respectable and enterprising citizens”, built a waterworks on his land in the Blythswood area of the city. At Willow Bank, his estate near Charing Cross at the west end of Sauchiehall Street, there were numerous springs which he channelled into a small reservoir near West Nile Street. He then conveyed the water throughout the city in large barrels, charging a halfpenny per stoup, making him a profit of £4000. Harley also supplied water for hot and cold public baths, which is how Bath Street came to be so named. In another age he would have bottled it, put a fancy label on it and made a fortune.

But, like other such innovative ventures, the novelty of Harley’s baths wore off, and 1834 marks the first time when a proposal for a public water supply was put before the town council. For the following quarter of a century Glasgow’s water needs were supplied piecemeal. While some areas were adequately catered for, others had no piped water whatsoever. Demand grew with the exponential rise of the population. Often the water many people drank and occasionally bathed in was the colour of sherry.

In the meantime the wells, like the Clyde, were fit for consumption neither by man nor beast. While companies competed to promote fresh sources of supply, people were dying. Recommendations from engineering titans such as Thomas Telford and Isambard Kingdom Brunel came and went. Clearly, something urgently needed to be done, but how, and who would be the man to boldly go where none had previously dared go?

Asked who such a person might be, my three co-passengers aboard the steamship are reluctant to name names. Two, finally, are mentioned. The first, says Black, is John Frederic Bateman, a 43-year-old Yorkshire-born civil engineer, who had acted as consultant on a scheme to provide Manchester with water, and who was asked to examine the proposed schemes for Glasgow. It was Bateman, says Black, who concluded that, of the options available, Loch Katrine represented the best value to the city. “Loch Katrine,” reported Bateman, “seems to stand alone in the field. No other source will meet all the requirements of the case.”

Combined with a highly satisfactory report on the quality of Loch Katrine water, that appeared to be that. But it was not. When the bill to approve Bateman’s recommendation reached the House of Commons it was thrown out after a last-minute objection from the Admiralty, who falsely insisted that taking so much water out of Loch Katrine would affect the navigability of the Firth of Forth.

In normal circumstances that would have been the death knell to the idea, but just when it seemed all hope was lost up stepped its saviour. That man, says Conejo-Watt, was Robert Stewart, Glasgow’s then Lord ­Provost, who has been described as possessing “exceptional tenacity and ability”. Stewart, who after his provostship became chairman of the Water Scheme, refused to accept defeat and persuaded the council to renew the struggle and introduce a new bill in the next session of parliament. With barely a whimper of protest that was passed in the spring of 1855 and the way was now clear for building work to start.

It proved to be a phenomenally arduous four-year undertaking. Progress was slow and painstaking. The rock in some of the tunnels was so hard that an advance of a metre a month was about as much as could be expected.

Tough working conditions

Loch Katrine lies 360 feet above the Clyde at Glasgow. Of the 26 miles of aqueduct between the loch and Milngavie, 13 miles were in tunnel, around 3.75 miles were in iron piping, and the remainder was in arched brickwork.

A village was built on the shores of Loch Chon to house the 3000 men who worked on the Loch Katrine aqueduct. It was immediately named Sebastopol, after the bomb of the same name, which in turn had been named after the Crimean War battle, because of the incessant roar of the blasting operations. Sebastopol had a provisions store, reading room, a church house and church, a resident doctor and a schoolmaster.

Working conditions, says Black, were bleak. The majority of the workforce was from Yorkshire and refused to allow Irish and Scots workers to live among them -- they were forced to build turf shelters in the nearby hills. In an article to be published in a forthcoming issue of History Scotland, Black writes: “Many of the men were accompanied by wives and families and, at the other camp on Drymen Moor in June 1859, one Irish lady died, three months after a difficult birth that produced twin boys.

Medical provision was available at Frenech, between Loch Chon and Loch Katrine, where a Dr Blackwood was based, while at Drymen Alexander Clarke, a young minister, was employed to run a school and provide religious services.

Also provided at both camps was a beer hut, run by Alexander Blair from Aberfoyle. Early on he was chided for selling spirits, claiming that he was innocent but that several shebeens existed around the contracts. The most famous was in a cottage near Loch Chon, known as Teapot. It was so named as every time the excise raided it they allegedly found the occupants quietly drinking tea.”

To the eye little evidence remains of the work the men did and the place where they lived. And where once the noise must have been excruciating all now is still and peaceful, the only sound audible is that made by the steamer and tinkle of water from the many burns that continually top up the loch. The benefits that Glasgow has had from its initial investment remain incalculable. Water use jumped from 6.5 million gallons in 1838 to almost quadruple that volume 30 years later. By March 1860 the new water supply was generally available across the city, though not everyone was convinced. One woman, angry at the closure of a well from which she had continued to draw water, said: “I canna thole that new water, it’s got neither taste nor smell.”

As backhanded compliments go, none would have pleased Robert Stewart and John Bateman more. “The Loch Katrine scheme,” as Tom Devine has acknowledged, “proved an incentive to other municipalities. Aberdeen had its water works in 1866 and Dundee in 1869. In the Glasgow case, it also formed the basis for other enterprises, as the city expended into slum clearance, gas supply, public lighting, tramways, libraries, museums, public baths, parks and art galleries. Glasgow had more municipal services than any other city of its size by the 1890s.”

For 150 years Loch Katrine’s water has flowed uninterrupted and untainted into Glasgow homes, a tangible testimony to the visionaries who pioneered and championed it. We may take water for granted -- in Scotland we each go through around 146 litres per day -- but the Victorians did not.

In 1872 in Kelvingrove Park the spectacular Stewart Memorial Fountain was erected by the Water Commissioners in recognition of Robert Stewart’s part in realising the dreams of many. An architectural homage to Scott’s Lady of the Lake, the restored fountain was unveiled last week by Robert Winter, Glasgow’s current Lord Provost. A toast, therefore, is called for. Simply turn on the tap and fill your glass.

The Loch Katrine Exhibition runs until December 31 at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow.