Army camp drainage and sewage systems

[danbetis]

HI all

Im researching a POW camp at Yatesbury and have a strange set of ditches just outside the camp area - I was wondering if anyone knows about First World War

Sewage drainage fields or leach fields as I think these might be them. Has anyone seen any reference to this type of drainage/sewage system?

Best wishes

Dan

[TEW]

Do the ditches show on Google satellite images / Google Earth or similar? If so any chance of a NGR or Google Earth link. Or are they showing up by other methods, geophysics or visible depressions etc?

I'm sure you're aware (if not part of) the considerable local archaeology interest in the Yatesbury, WWI RFC airfield, the associated RFC camps, the POW camp and then all the WWII infrastructure that any unidentified features could relate to.

TEW

[Moonraker]

Given the post-WWI development of the airfields, I was impressed at what the archaeological dig discovered relating to the Great War.

Of peripheral interest, National Archives file WORK 14/214 contains letters about the threat to Stonehenge of military activities. In one of June 4, 1917, Major-General W Western, in charge of administration at Southern Command, proposed putting posts and rails along a large part of the northern boundary of the Cursus and part of its southern boundary, but sewage from Lark Hill Camp would still be carried across it in a syphon for distribution on land beyond the southern boundary. (At this point the Cursus would have been almost indistinguishable from the surrounding land, having been all but "ploughed out".) Somewhere on GWF I recall there's a reference to an aerial photograph of the 1920s showing the "stain" left by the sewage.

I've also seen adverts in the Wiltshire papers inviting tenders for the removal of "night soil" from some of the Wylye Valley camps.

Moonraker

[TEW]

Having sewage syphoned out onto farmland and tenders for the removal of nightsoil sounds like a very basic technology. Would a complicated system of sewage management involving septic tanks discharging into leaching pipework be constructed for a wartime airfield and camp?

Would still like to see what the ditches look like, in what form are they visible, spacing etc. By 'ditch' do we mean an open visible gully or something more ephemeral like a crop mark?

TEW

[danbetis]

Hi

Thanks for the replies - yes Ive been digging and surveying Yatesbury for a few years now and am writing up the report at the moment which has spurred me onto finding out what the strange set of features are - Ive attached an image of them. I have a report of there being issues with the drainage and sewage - polluting the local water supply so I think these were dug to sort this out and it looks like they are a classic type of leach field - you can see the spread further up the image.

I have found modern egs of these types of sewage site but nothing dating to the First World War....

Best wishes

Dan