The Water Supply & Eversfield Works.
In the early part of the year an antagonism sprang up between the Hastings Board of Health and Mr. Clark, the proprietor of what was known as the Eversfield Water Works. The Board laid down pipes in the western district of the borough in consequence, they said, of a numerously signed memorial last year, complaining of the insufficient supply of water in the western district. The Local Board also intimated that the western district as well as the eastern would in the future be charged with any deficiency in the receipts of water-rates and expenses of water supply, and that they had full power to levy a rate over the whole of the district for the said deficiency whether the mains were laid through the whole or only a part. Then, as an inducement to the western householders to take the Hastings water the Board offered to connect the service-pipe of any house with the main during the laying down of that main at a charge of one shilling only. This, the opposing parties stigmatized as a “bait” and at the same time endeavoured to persuade consumers that the laying-on process for a shilling would be followed by a charge of 2/- or 2/6 in the pound for the supply of water, whereas the charge for the supply from the Eversfield works would be 6d in the pound, on and after Lady Day next. The Local Board denied their alleged intention to levy so high a rate, but admitted that a rate of 1/- was proposed – not on the gross, but the net rental. Commenting on this contention , the St. Leonards Gazette of Feb. 23rd remarked as follows:-
It is not our purpose to “take sides” in this controversy, but there are some matters connected with the subject which we feel called upon to “ventilate”, the better to enable persons to form their own opinion as to the desirability or otherwise of an additional supply of water. Most of the consumers in the western district are aware of the difficulty experienced in obtaining anything like an adequate supply of water during the dry seasons, two years since – a difficulty by no means peculiar to this locality; but all are not aware of the still greater difficulty experienced since that period, when water is to be found in abundance everywhere but here. It may be that in Eversfield place, Grand parade, Warrior square, and other parts equally low, a tolerably good supply is obtainable, but it is a fact for which we can vouch that most of the cisterns in Norman road, London road, Gensing road, North street, Alfred street, &c. have been empty for three months; and the trouble and inconvenience which the inhabitants have been put to in consequence form, as a matter resultant, the ground of complaint.
Water – good water, and plenty of it, is so necessary a commodity, that to be without it even for a single day is sufficiently inconvenient, but when day after day and night after night for -
