Site Event/Activity record ECH4526 - Market Square Crewe

An underground brick cistern was discovered in the course of excavating tree pits in the market square during an improvement scheme. Initially the roof of the structure was located and breached. Subsequent investigations located the entrance, a circular inspection hole, located in the eastern third of the structure. The structure is constructed of orange brick in English garden wall bond and is approximately 10m long, 3m wide and 4m high. It has a barrel vault ceiling and floor of a similar construction. The floor appears to have been sealed with bitumen. The sides and ends of the structure are vertical. Two brick arches, in quarter bond, support the side walls of the structure and divide it into three parts. At intermittent intervals where the ceiling meets the side walls or at the top of the end walls are a series of pipes feeding into/out of the structure. They were traced for a few meters from the structure, but it was not readily apparent if the pipes ended or had been removed. Deposits within the structure suggested that water has entered the structure through these pipes. The structure had been full of water, which drained away once the roof had been breached leaving a ‘tide mark’ at the top of the side walls. The brickwork of the structure suggests that this structure is broadly contemporaneous with the construction of the market square and surrounding buildings in the mid nineteenth century, although the neither feature or its access is depicted on the historic maps of the period. There is a marked similarity between this structure and a series of rainwater cisterns at Backford Hall, Backford, Chester (CHER 4549/1/0). The present hall, constructed in 1863, incorporates a complex system of drains and internal gutters which harvest rain water and channel it into the subterranean water cisterns. If this structure is also a cistern created to harvest ground water or rainwater, this may explain why some of the pipes located at the top of the cistern seem to go nowhere, they may have been intended to as overflows to prevent the contents of the cistern ever reaching street level. The cistern may have been intended as a ready supply of water for fire fighting or street cleaning.