World Water Day 2016

Supplying water to Belfast was fraught with difficulties. One of the most difficult was Lord Donegall withdrawing permissions to use some of the springs which were on his land (he own the majority of Belfast at this time.) On 29th April 1837 the Society wrote this extremely apologetic letter to his Lordship in an effort to persuade him to change his mind and allow the springs to be used for the good of Belfast.
“I am deputed by the Committee of the Belfast Charitable Society to express the great pain they have felt at receiving your Lordship’s letter on the 24th April in which you retract your offer of giving to the Committee of the Poorhouse a preference with respect to a lease of the unappropriated Springs of Water about Belfast as nothing was ever farther from the intention of the Committee than to encroach upon any of your Lordship’s rights and it was their particular wish that the very outside value of any water that might be required for the supply of the Town and to which your Lordship has legal claim, should be paid to your family and the committee would further assure your Lordship that nothing but the imperative necessity of procuring an immediate supply of water for the use of the Town could have induced them to recommend the adoption of any measure which did not meet the approbation of your Lordship to whom the Society is under such weighty obligations” ‪#‎WorldWaterDay‬