The Chelsea Waterworks Company was a London waterworks company founded in 1723 which supplied water to many central London locations throughout the 18th and 19th centuries until its functions were taken over by the Metropolitan Water Board in 1904.
The company was established "for the better supplying the City and Liberties of Westminster and parts adjacent with water"[1] and received a royal charter on 8 March 1723.[2] The company created extensive ponds in the area bordering Chelsea and Pimlico using water from the tidal Thames. These were to form the basis of the Grosvenor Canal, which was opened to traffic in 1825. By the 19th century, there were complaints about the quality of the water they were drawing from the River Thames, and in 1829, under engineer James Simpson, the company became the first in the country to install a slow sand filtration system to purify the water.[3]
The Metropolis Water Act 1852 (15 & 16 Vict. c. 84) prohibited the extraction of water for household purposes from the