The recent themed Context issue on ‘Building Services’ features a case study of Leicester, looking at the impact of civil engineering on the built environment as a result of Victorian public health measures, where Kent Woods presents a lessons and learning from the city’s comprehensive redevelopment of the sewerage system, by Joseph Gordon, between 1881 and 1891.
image: Context 159 p23 by Kent Woods
Leicester was among the very least healthy of the industrial towns throughout the Victorian period, with infant mortality some 35–40 per cent higher than the national average year after year, yet medicine at that time offered no explanation for this.
Woods writes:
‘… diseases now known to be infectious were widely attributed to ‘bad air’ – the miasmatic theory – which dominated thinking almost to the end of the century until the new science of bacteriology succeeded in identifying causative bacteria; even when the ambitious system of sewers and pumping stations was completed in 1875, the miasmatic theory was only slowly giving way to the evidence from epidemiology and bacteriology. It was an example of the right thing being done for the wrong reason.’
In Leicester, the appointments of a new Borough Surveyor Joseph Gordon (1837-1891) led to the comprehensive development of new infrastructure, which at the time attracted much attention- did you know that Leicester has the largest sewage farm in England (described in the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers as ‘1,375 acres in extent.. Exceeded only by the sewage farms of Paris and Berlin‘)! New pumping stations and sewers were installed, and you can still view the original steam engines by visiting the Leicester Museum of Science and Technology.
Town planning has its roots in public environmental health; and clearance, improvement and development often historically took place for reason, with significant engineering accomplishments underlying these developments. Why not spend a little time digging into the history of your own area, to see what lies beneath your more familiar streets.
View the Context article
See more IHBC background and guidance on CPD and on how you might use Context.
See the institute’s formal guidance paper on IHBC CPD(scheduled for update)
See more on the IHBC Areas of Competence and competences
For Leicester Museum of Science and Technology, Abbey Pumping Station see abbeypumpingstation.org
