Prior to 1696, water for the people of Nottingham was obtained from the river or from shallow wells, and carriers, known as Higglers, delivered it to those who wanted it. In 1696, the first Nottingham Waterworks Company obtained a lease from the Corporation, allowing it to build pumps and a water wheel to drive them, to extract water from the River Leen. The water was pumped to a reservoir to the east of Park Row, from where a network of pipes fed much of the town. The waterwheel and pumps were very similar to a system which the engineer George Sorocold had installed at London Bridge, and he may have been associated with the Nottingham scheme, but it is also possible that it was the Nottingham engineer Peter Whalley who designed it. In the eighteenth century Nottingham experienced rapid growth, as a result of the development of the frame knitting industry and the lace industry, with the population expanding five-fold from 10,000 in 1720 to 50,000 in 1830. The River Leen could no longer provide sufficient water to meet the need, and it also became polluted with sewage and industrial waste. Increasingly, there were complaints about the quality of the water.
