View report page

35
transfer. The area of supply was thus increased to include Woolwich,
Plumstead, Charlton, Bermondsey, Peckham, and Peckhamrye,
and arrangements were made about the same time that the
Company should supply various Government establishments. The
Ordnance Department at Woolwich and the Artillery Barracks of
the garrison were first supplied, and later contracts were made for
the supply of the Royal Arsenal, the Admiralty establishments,
the Dockyard at Woolwich, the Royal Observatory, the Royal
Naval Hospital, and His Majesty's Dockyard and Victualling
Yard at Deptford. As in the case of some other companies, the
profits made were for a time chiefly used in the outlay necessarily
involved in extending the area of supply.
In 1850 and 1852 Acts were passed enabling the Company
to increase their capital. About the middle of the present
century an establishment called the Plumstead, Woolwich, and
Charlton Consumers' Pure Water Company was started. A well was
constructed, and the necessary plant was put up by the Company,
which, however, afterwards became bankrupt, when the plant was
bought by the Kent Waterworks Company. In 1860 the North
Kent Company was started with an idea of supplying Dartford,
Crayford, Bexley, Wickham, Erith, Eltham, Chislehurst, and
Bromley. The business of this undertaking was taken over by
the Kent Company in 1864, and at the same time fresh capital
was raised, and a schedule of water-rates was prescribed. The
Company's area now included the places just mentioned. In
1867 the Local Board of Dartford sold their waterworks, which
were acquired by the Kent Company, and the Company's area was
thus extended to a district having a total area of about sixty-eight
square miles. In 1877 the Bromley Rural Sanitary Authority
requested the Kent Company to supply their district, and the
Dartford Rural Sanitary Authority made a similar request. The
result was that the Kent Waterworks Act of 1877 was passed and
extended the limit of supply to the following places, viz.:—
Swanscombe, Stone, Darenth, Wilmington, Sutton-at-Hone,
Farningham, Eynsford, Foots Cray, North Cray, St. Paul's Cray,
St. Mary Cray, Orpington, Farnborough, Chelsfield, Keston, West
Wickham and Hayes, and the portion of Beckenham known as