BRIEF HISTORY DURING THE SNOW ERA (1813-58)

"The Grand Junction Company obtain their supply at Brentford [up the River Thames from London by Kew Bridge], within the reach of the tide and near a large population, but they detain the water in large reservoirs, and their officers tell me they filter it; at all events, they supply it in as pure a state as that of the Lambeth Company obtained at Thames Ditton [far upriver beyond the tide], and their districts have suffered very little from cholera..."  

- Snow, John. Communication of Cholera, 1855, p. 92-3

The Grand Junction Company was incorporated in 1811 and had the original intake at Paddington, with water coming from the Grand Junction Canal.  Unfortunately the canal supply was meager and dirty, far different from what was promised years earlier to company investors: pure water, a constant supply and cheap rates.  The company moved in 1820 to a new site by the Thames River on four acres near Chelsea Hospital. The Paddington site remained with a reservoir but no building, and was not shown on Reynolds's map of 1859.  The reservoir can be seen in the 1871 Ordnance map, however, just south of the Grand Junction Canal below the Paddington Workhouse. The company also owned three reservoirs near Hyde Park which were sold to developers in the early 1850s. It then built a large reservoir at Campden Hill.  The three reservoirs North of Hyde Park are shown in Cruchley's map of 1846 and again in the Ordnance Survey map of 1872, but only as former locations.  The Campden Hill reservoir is further described below. 

In 1852, Parliament decided that no intake form the River Thames would be allowed by any company below Teddington Lock.  Responding to this law, the Grand Junction moved in 1853-55 to a new site chosen in Hampton (near the Southwark and Vauxhall and West Middlesex water company sites), where the works remained until the end of the nineteenth century. 

The company remained at the Chelsea site until 1855 when it moved again, but up-river to above Kew Bridge in Brentford.  The site in Chelsea, however, is still marked on the 1859 map.  Ten years later there is nothing left of the Chelsea site in the 1869 map. 

Also during 1855-56, the Grand Junction Waterworks Company built a six-million-gallon reservoir at Campden Hill, to replace the three former reservoirs near Hyde Park which had been sold to developers. The intent was to store clean water being piped 6-7 miles from the upriver intake intake site by Kew Bridge.  The reservoir is shown on the 1859 map as a rectangular circle near Camden Street, west of the base of Peel Street.  It is seen more clearly in the 1871 Ordnance Map.  

Sources:

Weinreb B, Hibbert C (eds). The London Encyclopaedia, 1993.

Dickinson HW. Water Supply of Greater London, 1959.