A Threat To Public Health
The centre of the town was around the Market Building opposite where East Street meets the High Street and was relatively clean compared to many similar market towns of the time. Since medieval times, sewerage, animal carcases and fluids had been washed down the natural slope that falls towards the lower ground around The Great Bridge and then into the water. The Mill Stream was used not only for its original purpose of providing flow to the Mill but also as the main sewage and waste outlet for the town. The Mill wheel being used to draw in and then churn up the increasingly dirty water and push it downstream and out of the town.
The first documented occasion when the Mill Stream was identified as a threat to public health was in 1855 when Tonbridge suffered a cholera outbreak. A contributing factor was identified as the Mill owners holding back the waters laden with disease until it suited them to have the waterpower the Mill wheel. The water therefore became still or slow moving through the town and in close proximity to the narrow streets
On the 22nd July 1868, Tonbridge recorded a temperature of 38.1c. (a UK record until 2003). The day before this, The Mill Pond was drained and cleaned for the first time in 20 years. The accumulation is reported to have been ‘mud and soil’ but, as we have learned may have been something considerably more unpleasant. It was removed at a cost of £8.5s.2d. (£1,100 in today’s money) Following which, it was agreed with Mr Charlton (the Mill owner), that at 5am each Sunday the sluice would be opened and remain open for most of the day in attempt to prevent the need for future clearances.
The weekly flushing through either did not happen or was insufficient to prevent further build ups, as in 1870, one of the recurring matters brought to the attention of the newly formed Local Board was the provision of a sewerage system for the District. The waterways through the town still acted as outlets for the increasing amount of sewage created by a steadily growing population. The centuries old facility of using the Mill Stream to flush away the relatively small amount of raw domestic sewage being flushed into the fields beyond the town via the Mill was long outdated and was a major problem. By 1871 a steam powered mill with a tall chimney had been added and this resulted in less water running through the mills causing the mill pond to become full of poor-quality water due to it not being flushed through.
In March 1871 George Hansley Fielding, a medical Dr and of Grove House, Mill Lane, who had written regularly to the Local board to complain about the Mill Stream says in one letter, “Mr Charlton’s mill pool is now fast being filled up with refuse filth, it being in fact the cesspool for upwards of one third of the houses in Tonbridge . . . my family have continually suffered effects of the noxious exhalations from the pool in hot weather, twice nearly fatally so”.