MILLIONS MADE FROM WATER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18459, 18 April 1922, Page 8

MILLIONS MADE FROM WATER

STORY OF A GOLDSMITH’S GREAT SCHEME.. Nearly three hundred years before Manchester conceived the idea of bringing her water from the Westmorland lakes, London had an artificial river of sweet water brought afar by the enterprise and foresight of one man. The history of that water-supply, known to every Londoner as the New River, is a romance.

Hugh Myddelton decided to bring the waters of the Chadwell and Amwell Springs, between Hertford and Ware, to London, and though he was almost ruined by the undertaking, he accomplished his task, and his successors have reaped untold wealth. SHARES WORTH £120,000. The orignal cost of the New River is not known, as all the records were destroyed by fire in 1769, but authorities agree that it cannot have exceeded £lB,OOO. Tn order to raise his money Myddelton took seventy-two people into partnership with him. They were called ‘ The Adventurers,” probably because they thought they were casting their bread upon the New River, and would never see it again! Thus an original share was worth about £250, but at the close of last century the man who wanted one would have had to pay at least £120,000 for it. The value of the property called the New River was revealed to a wondering world when the Court of Arbitration sat in 1903 to assess compensation to the company on the acquisation of their undertaking by the Metropolitan Water Board. The court found the income to be £614,000, and the Water Board was called upon to pay upwards of six and a half millions sterling, besides taking over the debenture stock for another £1,258,000. At the present time over a million people draw their water supply from this source, and the name of Hugh Myddelton. citizen and goldsmith, who with untiring energy, and despite tho bitterest opposition, brought his boon to London is held in high esteem.