Waterworks window

I was working around the Waterworks at the southern end of the nature reserve this morning. Part of the fence round the old Rothschild pumping station had blown down so I was able to get in and photograph the wonderful engraved windows in the front door, normally hidden from view. The Rothschilds sank boreholes here over 500 ft through the chalk to the massive aquifer under the Chiltern hills. An old beam steam engine (now at Kew Bridge Steam Museum in London) pumped water into a series of settling tanks and covered reservoirs, set into the wooded hillside and this clean water supplied the family's mansions nearby - Tring Park, Halton, Aston Clinton, Mentmore - and the villages within their estates, some of which had suffered previously from typhoid outbreaks from polluted wells. In 1866 a very elegant pumping station was built and the following year The Chiltern Hills Water Company was established to supply water from here to Aylesbury, Wendover, Tring and many surrounding villages. The windows, shown here (with difficulty given the reflections!), commemorate the inauguration of the waterworks. It is now part of the massive Thames Water empire and still supplies around a million gallons of water every day.