YOUNG ALHS
the first Public
Conveniences
in Abergavenny
In October 1841 the Abergavenny Improvement Commissioners gave instructions that “Places for the convenience of Persons making water in the Lane and in the Market Place be provided.”
The conveniences are not mentioned again but they probably consisted of a “midden closet” which would have meant a hole over a cesspit. We don’t know if some sort of seat was provided over the hole or whether there was a simple building that would have provided some privacy, but there was probably at least some sort of screen. These closets tended to be smelly and if the cesspit was unlined the contents would have seeped into the ground. The ‘night soil men’ would have emptied the cesspit when necessary. Siting the closet any distance from nearby houses would have been difficult at the market. But the conveniences would have been an improvement on the previous situation where there was no provision at all for relieving yourself.
Designs for flushing toilets were first produced in the late seventeen hundreds, but public flushing toilets were not used in the UK until the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. It is very unlikely that any were provided in Abergavenny until many years later.
(Images: Wikimedia Commons – above: Ty-bach at St Fagans and below: a two-seater in the now-ruined Cwrt, Llanchaer, Pembrokeshire)
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