| Topic: | Re:Re:1894 Map showing The "bubbling" Brook ... | |
| Posted by: | Anthony Waller | |
| Date/Time: | 12/11/12 16:59:00 |
| It gets rather interesting in a historical geographic sort of way! When the railway came it had a need for two key resources. Steam required water and coal. The coal was not a problem it came by canal and river and the railway was a modern fast bridgehead for distributing coal throughout the UK. The GWR had the freight links to the docks and the LSWR the passenger and light goods more based on local commerce. When the railway arrived at Brentford it needed a plentiful water supply and a location for it's good yard. Kew had a pumping station but surplus water was not in abundance. The location selected was east of Brentford station. The site was purchased because....it had a supply of water from a lively brook. Enough to replenish the tank engines that then used the line. The Brook was tapped and the rest of the Brook running to the Thames was diminished and thus piped underground and the area gradually built upon. This remained stable until the run down of steam on British Railways. Although the Brentford Loop was electrified, this was only for Suburban passenger trains. Long distance trains remained Steam until 1968. But freight was mixed diesel and steam until the late 1960's. After the goods depot went into decline and finally closed, flooding started to occur in Brook Road South, St Pauls Rec, Grosvenor road and Lateward road. With water no longer being used in large volume by the railway, the reamining ducted section of the Brook could not cope with larger surges of water. So it appears the Metropolitan Water Board carried out remedial works between 1967 and 1973. It would seem that both the garage sites are the 'flood defence key spots' But this is where no records have yet surfaced apart from older locals providing this explanation. So an older map is going to be needed to plot the original brook and a later map plotting the ducted route which may differ, then a plan of the flood relief locations. Cannot believe Thames water has no archive having moved it around so much 70% is now missing and they placed most of the remains uncatalogued in the Metropolitan Archive in Clerkenwell. So much for a private utility being responsible and trustworthy. |