RUGBY (HIGH LEVEL).' 



HISTORY. 



A reference to thi8 sewage farm occurs in the 

 Rivers Pollution Commission First Report, Vol. I., 

 pages 79 and 80 (1870) :— 



" At Rugby — a town of more than 8,000 inhabi- 

 tants — the board of health have taken a lease of 

 65 acres of land for a term of thirty-one years, at a 

 rental which, with rates and taxes, amounts to 

 £4 10s. per acre ; and, confident in the powers of 

 their somewhat gravelly soil (lying upon a clay sub- 

 soil) to cleanse their town drainage and so convert 

 it into valuable produce, they have laid out nearly 

 £5,000 on the works required for the distribution of 

 the sewage over it . . . The quantity of sewage at 

 command is about 900 tons a day, or nearly 4,000 

 tons per annum for every acre of the farm. The 

 land has been in hand for only one year, and much 

 of it was sown with Italian rye grass for the first 

 time in the spring of 1869, so that the best results can 



which it had passed 150 yds. down the slope, thence 

 it flowed along a surface channel about 300 yds. to 

 another acre of Italian rye grass ; and No. 3 was 

 taken at the foot of this grass plot, about 80 yds. 

 from the carrier which supplied it." 



REPORTS TO THE ROYAL COMMISSION. 



Separate or Combined. — The 

 The Sewage. separate system is used in parts 

 of the town, but all the water 

 from back portions of roofs and yards drains to the 

 foul-water sewers. The sewage is Domestic with the 

 exception of some oil from engine works. Subsoil 

 Water. — The sewers on the whole are in fair condi- 

 tion ; a large amount of subsoil water, however, is 

 admitted to some of the older sewers where clay 

 joints were used instead of cement. The average 

 Dry - weather Flow is about 300,000 gallons per 

 twenty-four hours. The Water Supply is 26-5 gal- 



hardly have been yet realised ... A considerable 

 portion had been let at £10 an acre . . . In illustra- 

 tion of the cleansing power of land and plant at 

 Rugby, three samples taken about mid-day July 13 

 (1869) have been analysed : No. 1 was raw sewage 

 taken from the hydrant as it poured over the top of 

 the farm ; No. 2 was the same sewage taken at the 

 foot of 1| acres of land in Italian rye grass over 



• NoTz. — There are two sewage farms at Rugby. The one described 

 deals with the sewage from the N.-W. and S.-W. parts, and has itself 

 both high-level and low-level tanks. 



Ions per head, and is obtained partly from the 

 river Avon and partly from gathering grounds 

 and wells at Moreton and Bilton. The average 

 annual Rainfall from 1855 to 1897 was 25'62 ; 

 for the year 1900 the rainfall was 30'68 in. 

 Flushing. — The gradients are generally self- 

 cleansing ; where necessary the sewers are flushed 

 by hose and by flushing penstocks in the manholes. 

 The Rugby School baths discharge about 53,000 

 gallons of water. Stay in Sewers. — The sewage 



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