St Thomas' Water Tower
A bit of warmer, and drier weather today, maybe Spring is coming at last. Had a bit of free time in the afternoon, so I stopped by the old water tower at the top of St Thomas' Hill in Canterbury – built in 1927, it stored and supplied drinking water for the city until it was de-commissioned in 1993.
In the 1860s, Canterbury's water supply was drawn from a variety of sources, such as the River Stour and local wells. However, without a filtration system, the water was deemed hazardous and unfit for human use. By 1870 a pumping station was constructed at Wincheap, designed to filter the water and make it suitable to drink.
Water was now being drawn from two deep boreholes in the chalk at a rate of 1,000 gallons a minute, and pumped under pressure through a main pipeline into a 350,000-gallon holding tank at the top of St Thomas' Hill. In 1924, two more deep boreholes were excavated at the pumping station for further water extraction. But with the holding tank only being able to handle 350,000 gallons, a second storage facility was needed, and by 1927, Canterbury Gas & Water had the tower constructed.
The entire water supply network remained active up until 1993 when the holding tank was drained. Then, just 4 years later, the water tower was also drained, and by 1998, the water production system was officially decommissioned, leaving the tower standing empty and disused. In more recent years, it was repurposed as a mobile phone mast, with transmitter dishes having been installed on the roof, but leaving the rest of the rest of the tower abandoned.
