Council’s New Drainage Scheme - Means an end to Cesspits

For thirty years hundreds of people living in Bedford Road and Newton Road, Rushden, have had to put up with cesspit drainage. Now the urban council has started a £60,000 scheme to bring mains drainage to these areas.

Drainage pipe being laid on Court Estate

Everybody in Newton Road and Avenue Road would be able to do away with cesspits if they had not already done so.

The main problem the contractors have come up against after about two months work, has been flooding. This has always been a problem with the cesspits.

Mrs. Joan Mead, 219 Bedford Road, told a reporter: “They are not watertight and we have often had to have ours cleared out after it has filled up with water.

“When it rains we get a smell. We have only recently had a bath put in, because we knew the mains drainage was coming.”

Mr. Evelyn explained that the small sewage works at the end of Newton Road would become a pumping station and would pump the sewage up the Newton Road pipe until gravitation took it to the town’s sewage works.

Work had already been done at the sewage works to enable the extra bulk to be coped with.

Also included in the scheme is the laying of a duplicate main along, the path of a present relief sewer. This will come from Harborough Road to College Street, via Little Street, Rushden Hall and Duck Street.

Cesspit owners have had to pay ten shillings to the council every time they want a pit emptying and this to most has been the main inconvenience for inevitably, they say the emptying causes a smell.

Mrs. Sandra Brown, of 184 Newton Road, welcomed the advent of mains drainage. She got the impression that most of the older pits now leaked a little and were due for repair anyway.

“I think most people will be pleased to be on the main. It just isn’t nice to have a hole full of cess in the garden,” she said.

Mrs. W. Archer, of 180 Avenue Road, had her own drainage linked with the main six years ago. The main advantage to her is that she doesn’t have to have anything emptied. “I don’t think about it anymore,” she said.

Another woman in Bedford Road said: “It is not very pleasant having it emptied,” but generally she was quite pleased with her cesspit although she welcomed the mains drainage.

The cost of the scheme is being met by a loan to the urban council from the Public Works Loan Board.

The only people who will not be able to take advantage of it are people living in an area off Bedford Road, which formerly belonged to Bedford Rural Council.