If we spoke of the beauties of Paddington to those whose acquaintance with this place is of recent date, they would naturally think we were about to describe the gorgeous mansions of the fashionable “Tyburnia.” But the old village of Tybourn, or Westbourn, and the new town of Pædings, were surrounded by a greater combination of natural beauty than those who have not studied the ancient topography of this district can well conceive.
Out of thirty-seven districts, into which, for certain special purposes, the Registrar-General has arranged London and its vicinity, in a series of excellent tables contained in his very valuable Report on Cholera, we find that there are only four parishes of greater average elevation than Paddington; the estimated elevation of this parish above Trinity high watermark being seventy-six feet; Pancras eighty; Islington eighty-eight; Marylebone one hundred; and Hampstead three hundred and fifty.
On referring to those accurate and beautiful surveys published by the Ordnance Map-Office, I find that the highest point in Paddington, the peak of Maida-hill, rises to 120 feet 9 inches, while the lowest, Elms-lane, sinks to 57 feet. In fact, Paddington consists chiefly of two hills, Maida-hill and Craven-hill; the north-eastern slope of Notting-hill; and a valley, through which the Tybourn ran. In the south part of the parish this valley is very narrow, but to the north it spreads out into Maida Vale.
Woodfield road, and the neighbourhood, is another elevated spot in Paddington, but in the whole of that part of the parish, as well as in Maida Yale, the clay is immediately below the surface. In some places the surface has been raised by the earth dug out of the Canal, and in others, by deposits brought from other parts of London; indeed the alterations which have taken place, inconsequence of the removal of the natural soil, and the addition of “made ground,” make it difficult to tell what is the natural elevation of any particular spot in the parish.
The tables from which I have just now quoted, and other authenticated statistical accounts, tend to prove that the number of feet we live above high water-mark is an appreciable quantity in the account of health and disease, life and death. But elevation is only one item, though an important one, in this important account. The nature as well as the height of the soil on which we live, influences the health and life of every living being.
A considerable portion of the ground, composing the south and south-eastern parts of Paddington, consists of sand and gravel; the northern and north-western parts being clay. Vast quantities of the former have been removed; and although the Paddington soil was sufficiently “factitious” at the time Lysons wrote, it has become much more so since that time. Those only who have carefully watched the modes which have been adopted to raise the ground for making new roads, and for elevating the basement of houses in certain parts of this parish, can form any idea of the immense quantity of “rubbish” which has been “shot here.” As to the nature of a great deal of that rubbish, I will not offend my readers by attempting any description. Suffice it to say, that thousands of loads of sand and gravel have been taken away since the Act passed which permitted the sale of this natural soil, and vegetable and animal matters of all kinds, and in all stages of putrefaction, have been emptied into hollow places. Besides the effect produced by the poisonous gases which must arise from such factitious soil, other bad effects frequently follow the removal of the natural earth and the substitution of made ground. All the house-drains which are laid on the latter, sink, and in a short time become either partially, or wholly, useless for the purpose for which they were made; and new drains, constructed at great expence and inconvenience, are necessary. When from this or any other cause, the drain does not empty itself into the common sewer, it is emphatically termed by the men who work in the sewers, “a dead’un.”
Having for several years lived in a house which owned one of these dead drains, and having been very nearly “a dead’un” myself in consequence, I was led to enquire into this subject somewhat minutely; and although the drainage of an immense city is too important a subject to be treated of by the topographer in a sketch of a single parish, yet I cannot refrain from saying a word or two in this place on a point of such vital consequence.
The Thames having been most mischievously used as the great common sewer for London and its neighbourhood; and Paddington which is so much above its level, having been drained into it, one would have imagined that the system of drainage here would have completely removed all debris from so elevated a spot. Such, however, has not been the case, as I have learned from the Reports of the Sewer Commissioners, and from a personal inspection of some of the sewers.
Nothing worthy the name of a system of drainage, can be secured, till the great river, which was intended by its Creator to bring health and life to the people, instead of being made by man the instrument of his own disease and death, is freed from the sewerage of a whole metropolis: yet much good may be done in the mean time, and at a comparatively small outlay.
Thousands of drains, now existing, have been made of such porous bricks, and these have been placed side by side with such an unadhesive layer of dirt, that instead of acting as an impervious tube through which the soil could pass to its destination, the common sewer, the bottom of the drain acts as a mere filter for its contents. Glazed earthenware pipe-drains have been introduced to obviate this and other great evils; and the dwellers in towns have seldom had a greater blessing befall them, than this discovery. These tubular drains are cemented together, so as to form a hollow tube, and are laid at so much per foot under the regulation of the Sewers Office, by workmen who understand what a house-drain should be; and it must be understood that a house-drain and a field-drain are two distinct things; though very many builders have thought what would do for one, would do for the other.