A COMPREHENSIVE study of Dilton Marsh’s sewerage and water is now available to read for free on the Dilton Marsh Local History Society website.
The report covers water and sewerage in the village before 1970, the Dilton Marsh Sewerage Treatment Works itself and the impact of privatisation and climate change on sewerage after 1970.
The report was the brainchild of Dilton Marsh resident Lorraine Sencicile, who has been writing about local history since 1994. Lorraine, who moved to the local area in 2013, said, “The village is not called Dilton MARSH for nothing!
“Westbury librarians and the local historians, based upstairs in the Westbury Library, were very helpful, as were as were Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre and Wessex Water. The latter even arranged for me to have a look around the Dilton Marsh Sewerage Waste Treatment Plant, where I took a lot of pictures. For the visit, I was joined by Mike Hyde, a Dilton Marshian who not only knows the village well but also has a good memory without embellishments!
“My base is that of a researcher, and I began writing about local history back in 1994 when I taught economics at the University of Kent, Canterbury. In the town of Dover, where I lived for some nearly 60 years, on the floor of the local Nat West bank, was a depiction of a Dover building long since gone with the caption that it was the first High Street bank in the country. I chased this up and in 1994 my book Banking on Dover was published. Not a commercial hit but it was appreciated in the academic world. From then on I started writing articles on local history for one of the Dover local papers and stayed with them until 2012, as well as national publications.”
Lorraine has published 200 articles on her website, Doverhistorian.com, as well as for local and national publications.
“I am still fascinated by local history and the article telling the history of Dilton Marsh water, sewerage and flooding, comes directly from this fascination,” she said.
To view the document in full, visit the Dilton Marsh Local History Society website https://shorturl.at/gszCP
