Years ago I was invited to the Fountain Society summer party in the garden of a house in Chelsea. The society and its members were definitely posh, having the Prince of Wales as patron. Although they were posh, I was a bit drunk, after a leisurely lunch as a guest of Berry Bros. & Rudd. Anyway, I have outlived the Fountain Society which has closed and donated its funds to the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association. It has been significantly outlived by another organisation much older than me.
The Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association was founded in 1859 and is still going today as The Drinking Fountain Association. I came across this example of their work in Hyde Park.
Dicken’s Dictionary of London, 1879, has this entry under Drinking Fountains:
“Until the last few years London was ill-provided with public drinking fountains and cattle troughs. This matter is now well looked after by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association, which has erected and is now maintaining nearly 800 fountains and troughs, at which an enormous quantity of water is consumed daily. It is estimated that 300,000 people take advantage of the fountains on a summer’s day, and a single trough has supplied the wants of 1,800 horses in one period of 24 hours. Several ornamental fountains have been provided by private munificence. Amongst these may be instanced the Baroness Burdett Coutts’s beautiful fountains in Victoria-park and Regent’s-park the Maharajah of Vizianagram’s in Hyde-park; Mrs. Brown’s, by Thornycroft, in Hamilton-place, Mr. Wheeler’s at the north of Kew-bridge; and Mr. Buxton’s at Westminster.”
There is another trough in Hyde Park, near Albert Gate, with this touching inscription.
Here is a prominent fountain in the City and I reproduce the inscription below. Meanwhile, I am pleased that the unpretentious Drinking Fountain Association is still with us although the Fountain Society has, unlike me, dried up.
