Moreton in Marsh, Bourton on the Water – there’s no doubt the Cotswolds have had an ample supply of running water for thousands of years. Cirencester too is named after a river: Corinium, the camp on the Churn.
Wherever they went, Romans took trouble to make sure they had water, for cooking and bathing, to carry away their sewage, and for industry. Cirencester was at the confluence of two rivers, with no need to construct aqueducts. Not only did they have the Churn, meandering its way from Seven Springs, joined by another stream rising at Ullenwood, but also the Dunt which has its source at Duntisbourne Abbots, flowing down the valley past Daglingworth, almost meeting the Churn where present day Gloucester Street emerges onto Abbey Way, flowing the other side of the gravel-island on which the Romans built Corinium.
Conveniently the Churn provided a ‘moat’, running outside the city wall paralleling modern Grove Lane alongside the line of the wall to Watermoor, where sewage from Corinium joined the flow of the Dunt, coming along, outside the wall, the opposite side of town, on the line of present-day Sheep Street, probably receiving a burden of more sewage on the way.
Excavations near the site of the Memorial Hospital found what appeared to be a Roman sewer deep below the surface of what is now the new carpark. Archaeologists haven’t conclusively worked out how the Romans diverted the flow of fresh water and sewage into and out of the ‘city’, because successive inhabitants stole stone from earlier buildings and treated water as if it was free.
After the Romans left, there was probably less municipal spirit, and powerful individual citizens diverted the water to suit their own purposes. One particular activity leading to abuse of watercourses was watermills, not only to grind corn, but also for the wool trade, which needed the power they could provide for fulling and carding. The Churn was diverted before it reached Cirencester, to feed Trinity Mill (opposite the Golf Course) and, when the Dunt became unreliable, it was supplemented by a link dug from the Churn to supply the millpond at Barton Mill.
The Abbot and Canons at Cirencester Abbey certainly needed water, not only for cooking and sewage flushing, but also to enable them to establish fishponds for their ‘meatless’ Fridays. The Abbey Lake is supplied from a split in the Churn as it emerges from the downstream end of Gooseacre.
The other purposes are probably why the Dunt is now diverted past the Cirencester Open Air Swimming Pool and culverted under the town along the line of Coxwell Street – where it might once have been open – under the ‘hump’ in Dollar Street and then through the Abbey Grounds to emerge at the rear of the Parish Church graveyard before flowing past the Waterloo carpark and eventually reuniting with the Churn as it heads towards Cricklade.
Much later, when the Industrial Revolution visited Cirencester, we had a branch of the Severn Thames Canal system complete with a Wharf where goods were imported and exported, and this was fed from the Dunt, flowing from Cecily Hill under the lawns of Cirencester Park possibly via the reservoir of the lake by the Old Kennels and then out along the old course under Sheep Street to the bottom of Querns Hill. The Bathurst family had a considerable stake in the Canal which then flowed out of town via Siddington.
We have taken the importance of water for granted far too long. For health, agriculture, and prosperity’s sake it’s time to rethink its value.
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