St Augustine's Conduit House
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St Augustine's Conduit House is an archaeological site in
Canterbury Canterbury (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, in the county of Kent, England; it was a county borough until 1974. It lies on the River Stour, Kent, River Stour. The city has a mild oceanic climat ...
,
Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...
, England, a medieval conduit house built to serve
St Augustine's Abbey St Augustine's Abbey (founded as the Monastery of Ss Peter and Paul and changed after its founder St Augustine of Canterbury's death) was a Benedictine monastery in Canterbury, Kent, England. The abbey was founded in 598 and functioned as a mon ...
a short distance away. It is an
English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, a battlefield, medieval castles, Roman forts, historic industrial sites, Lis ...
site, and a
scheduled monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage, visu ...
.


Description

The practice of supplying water to a monastic community via a conduit house, where local rivers and streams might be polluted, was common in the medieval period."History of St Augustine's Conduit House"
''English Heritage''. Retrieved 14 January 2022.
This conduit house, to supply water to St Augustine's Abbey, was built in the mid 12th century, on a west facing hillside. Springs near the building were tapped; four tunnels, fed by several smaller ducts, brought water into the collecting tank. It is roughly octagonal, about north-east to south-west by , with an earth bed, and walls surviving to about high. Water was piped to the abbey.through a lead pipe of diameter 3 inches, leading downhill from the western side of the tank. At the abbey there may have been a water tower, feeding smaller tanks in the various parts of the community. In 1733 Sir John Hales, owner of the reservoir, allowed Canterbury to use it to supplement its water supply, and it is thought that he made the modifications in which the tank was divided and a new roof, consisting of two shallow
barrel vaults A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault, wagon vault or wagonhead vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves, in the case of a pointed barrel vault) along a given distance. The curves are ...
, was built. There were further repairs and refurbishment, including rebuilding the roof, in the 19th century. The roof of the conduit house collapsed in February 1988; there was partial excavation later that year by the
Canterbury Archaeological Trust Canterbury Archaeological Trust (CAT) is an independent charity formed in 1975 to undertake rescue excavation, research, publication and the presentation of the results of its work for the benefit of the public. The Trust's main activities are ...
, which established some details of the building's construction.


References

{{reflist Scheduled monuments in Kent Archaeological sites in Kent English Heritage sites in Kent Buildings and structures in Canterbury Medieval Kent