Cleaning up the Town - The Beginning of the Tourist Trade

Nowadays a large part of Caernarfon's income comes from the tourist trade, but this is not a modern phenomena; the town, even in the early years of the 19^th Century, was the preferred holiday destination for those hardy pioneers of the tourist trade. The main drawback to the success of this industry was the health and cleanliness of the town.

It wasn’t until 1869 that the town had a supply of clean water, when the fountain was opened on Castle Square, and this supply was only provided after the scare of the cholera epidemic of 1866/67. Previously water had been supplied through public pumps or from age-old wells, indeed St. Helen’s Well on South Road had to be closed on health grounds after the cholera epidemic.

A more immediate problem for the town in the early days of tourism was the filthy state of its streets; organised refuse collection was first recorded in 1879 which meant that before this date household and commercial waste would have been thrown out into the street. Piles of stinking muck were the norm, as was the practice of keeping pigs in pens in the street outside the front door.

Before the Reform Act of 1835 changed the role of local councils, the Town Council appointed Inspectors of Nuisances to roam the town checking for these illegal deposits. Their reports to the Town Council, the Presentments of Nuisances, survive from 1786 to 1832 and reveal exactly how filthy the town really was.

The presentment of 1791 reads “We also Present Mr. Morris Griffith Shoemaker for encroaching on the Land of the said Borough by building a Pig Stye thereon (the Nuisance of which is great, that the Dross, and Filth from it runs to the Neighbours's Houses),” while in 1819 one complaint was that “Glan y mor - That the blood running from a Slauter house in this place is a Nuisance and that it is in every other respect a filthy unwholesome place.”

Gradually the state of the town improved. More of the inspectors’ time was spent investigating other nuisances such as encroaching upon Corporation land or building unauthorized structures, and controlling travelling pedlars who set up their stalls in the streets without permission. However, there were still reports of filth in the streets, as in 1827, “…..a certain called Crown Street the said Street being the Kings Common Highway a certain Slaughterhouse did use and a great quantity of Dung & other filth continue and the Blood from the said Slaughterhouse there & within the Jurisdiction afr^d did present & suffer & still do present & suffer to run and overflow into and upon the s^d Kings Highway and the same Blood Dung and other filth (...?...) afr^d from the Slaughterhouse afr^d by reason whereof divers hurtful & unwholesome smells from the s^d Blood Dung & other filth did then & there arise and thereby the air there & within the Jurisdiction afr^d became (...?...) & is corrupted & infested to the Common Nuisance of all the Lieges and Subjects of our Said Lord the King…..”

The last presentment, dated the second of January 1832, is a petition signed by sixteen of the town’s Grand Jurors. This petition demands that the Corporation cleans up the town; “…..and more likely to cause all nuisances which are at present a source of great disgrace to the Town and which owing to the rapid increase in number of inhabitants and the great influx of Visitors during the Summer Months, will if not timely abated present infectious diseases and cause strangers to abstain from making Carnarvon a place of summer resort…..”

This clearly shows the townspeople were concerned that unless the streets were cleaned the embryonic tourist trade could be irreparably damaged. Thankfully over the years conditions improved, and today we are still reaping the benefits from the efforts of these health pioneers of the 19^th Century.