THE GROWTH OF MODERN NOTTINGHAM 7 



The reason for this was that on three sides it was hemmed in by in- 

 violable property rights, which the owners, fortunately for later gener- 

 ations, refused to sell; on the north and south by the common fields over 

 which the burgesses had rights of common; on the west by Nottingham 

 Park belonging to the Duke of Newcastle and by WoUaton Park belonging 

 to Lord Middleton. The result was a problem of overcrowding in the 

 old town as grim as any to be found in England. A network of new 

 streets and alleys was rapidly thrown up, ' a resurrection of buildings, 

 generally without order, seated hke clusters of mushrooms in a field cast 

 up b>' chance ' as a contemporary complained. Gradually, the gardens 

 and orchards of Deering's map disappeared and left behind them an 

 ironical memory of their former fragrance in the names of the streets 

 that took their place: Plum Street, Pear Street, Currant Street, Garden 

 Street, the Meadow Platts. They branched off, as the map shows, in all 

 directions, hke the shots and furlongs of an open field wherever there 

 was land enough for a new street. (See Plan of Nottingham in 1831 inset 

 opposite page 8.) 



But streets are extravagant creations; they consume land space both 

 in front and behind, and this luxury Nottingham could not afford. Alleys 

 were more economical, but better stiU were blocks of houses arranged 

 in courts to face one another across an open drain and having no back 

 entrance of any kind. These were the notorious back-to-back houses of 

 Nottingham, of which there were nearly 8,000 in 1845. They were fre- 

 quently built in the form of narrow courts, entered by a tunnel twenty to 

 thirty feet long, eight feet high, and from thirty to thirty-six inches wide. 

 Thus was Deering's Nottingham, that ' exquisite spot to build a town 

 upon ', changed into a chequer-board of mean streets, alleyways and 

 courts, and a byword for filth and misery beyond belief. 



When the Commissioner appointed in 1845 to enquire into the con- 

 dition of large towns and populous places came to Nottingham he was 

 compelled to report that the average age at death of the inhabitants of 

 several of the Nottingham districts was only 14 or 15 years, a lower rate 

 than had yet been ascertained to exist in any other city or town within 

 the British Empire. 



To set off against this unenviable pre-eminence, there is one achieve- 

 ment in the sphere of social reconstruction of which Nottingham should 

 be pre-eminently proud. This is the wonderful revolution effected in its 

 water supply by that remarkable man, Thomas Hawkesley, the foremost 

 civil engineer of his age, and probably the greatest benefactor that 

 Nottingham has every had. He was a native of Nottingham, born of a 

 well-known local family, and his work in the sphere of civil engineering 

 in England and on the continent ranks among the notable achievements of 

 the age. 



Mr. Hawkesley was engineer to the Trent Waterworks, a company that 

 was incorporated in 1825. Before the reform which he inaugurated, 

 water was suppUed to the houses of the labouring classes by means of 

 carriers, who sold it at the rate of a farthing a bucket, or where it had 

 to be carried any distance, a halfpenny a bucket, but after the changes 

 carried out by Mr. Hawkesley, 8,000 houses containing 35,000 people, as 



