Gosforth, sewage tanks

R. Welford (1879) records that the subsiding tanks of the Local Board of Health stood next to Salter's Bridge. There were six tanks, each 80 feet x 8 feet, and capable of holding 58,000 gallons of sewage. They occupied the top of the embankment that skirts the private road to Gosforth House on the west. On the other side of the road next to the Ouse Burn were the filtration beds. When the sewage had passed through one or more of the tanks, and all the solid matter removed, the liquid runs under the raodway to the filtration beds. These were a field divided by cemented channels, from where the liquid flows over the soil and passes into drainage pipes below. The tanks were opened in 1876, the filtration beds in 1879. Both were designed and built by Mr Thomas Thomson C.E., the Board surveyor. The subsiding tanks cost £1,872 and the filtration beds £1,220.