New River source

The New River is neither new nor a river. It is a water supply aqueduct, completed in 1613, to bring drinking water from Hertfordshire to North London. It used to go from New Gauge in Hertford down as far as Sadlers Wells in Clerkenwell but now the overground waterway now ends at Stoke Newington.
Before 1600 London’s water supply was limited to the River Thames, local streams, wells and springs. These sources, often contaminated, were distributed by sellers carrying water in wooden buckets. In 1600 Edmund Colthurst had the idea to bring water from the springs in Hertfordshire and Middlesex to London. In 1606 a Parliamentary Act granted the Corporation of London the power to make a “New River for bringing water to London from Chadwell and Amwell in Hertfordshire”.