Stoneware water filter made by Lipscombe & Company, around 1880.

Charcoal inside this filter absorbed bacteria from water. People who could afford one used it to make water safer to drink.

In industrial Manchester, pollution from factories and toilets made drinking the town’s water dangerous.

In 1848, a problem solving engineer, Frederick Bateman, started building a chain of reservoirs in the Peak District. They supplied Manchester’s growing population with clean water. Then in 1894, a new pipeline brought water from the Lake District to quench the expanding city’s thirst.