Restored Victorian drinking fountain in Earlsdon thought to be only one in UK still workingA Victorian drinking fountain in Coventry has been restored to earn the place of possibly being the only one in the UK still working.
The fountain, in Earlsdon Avenue South, Earlsdon, was unveiled to the public yesterday.
The cast iron fountain, made by the Sun Foundry in Glasgow in the 1860s, was restored using a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £9,800.
The project was co-ordinated by two local community groups, the South Earlsdon Neighbours Association and the Earlsdon Research Group, in partnership with Coventry City Council, Severn Trent Water and the specialist Fountain Company of Glossop in Derbyshire.
Peter Walters, who chairs the organising committee, said : "There are a handful of similar fountains remaining in the UK, but it is believed that this is the only one still working."
Thursday's ceremony was attended by local residents Mary Maginnis and Ruskin Tromans.
Mary lived in Earlsdon in the 1930s while nine-year-old Ruskin is a pupil at Hearsall School.
As a child Mary was forbidden by her mother to drink from the fountain, however she was one of the first to test it out.
After her first swig, she told BBC Coventry and Warwickshire: "It's gorgeous.
"I've been wanting to do that for how long?"
Mr Walters told the Telegraph: "It is not only a handsome artifact from Victorian Coventry, but it played an important part in improving public health at a time when water-borne diseases like cholera were endemic in this country."
The fountain was in Spon Street until it was moved to Earlsdon in 1921.
Public drinking fountains in the streets, fed by the mains, were an important weapon in the war against disease in Victorian England.
Coventry itself had suffered a cholera outbreak in 1849 which killed more than 200 people.
Last year the Architects Journal in the UK launched a competition to design a new generation of public drinking fountains, aimed at combating the rising production of plastic water bottles.