Metropolitan Drinking Fountain & Cattle Trough Association

Drinking Fountains

This web site attempts to catalogue all the extant Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association drinking fountains. The survey started in London but has been extended to the rest of the UK, Ireland and beyond.

The Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association was an association set up in London to provide free drinking water. Originally called the Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain Association the name was changed to reflect the provision of cattle troughs throughout London and other parts of the country. The organisation is still active as the Drinking Fountain Assocation. If you are seeking to restore a drinking fountain then please contact the Drinking Fountain Assocation.

This survey may be incomplete so if you know of any fountains that are not displayed on this site please let me know.

Fountains in, and around, London

Click on the name of a borough or county shown above for pictures of the known drinking fountains in, and around, Greater London; or click on a county or country in the list below for known drinking fountains outside Greater London.

If you know of any fountains in London that I've not included please send me details.

Fountains in the rest of the UK and Ireland

Bedfordshire | Berkshire | Bristol | Buckinghamshire | Cambridgeshire | Cheshire | Cornwall | Cumbria | Derbyshire | Devon | Dorset | Durham | Essex | Gloucestershire | Greater Manchester | Hampshire | Herefordshire | Hertfordshire | Isle of Wight | Kent | Lancashire | Leicestershire | Lincolnshire | Merseyside | Norfolk | Northamptonshire | Northumberland | Nottinghamshire | Oxfordshire | Shropshire | Somerset | Staffordshire | Suffolk | Surrey | Sussex | Tyne and Wear | Warwickshire | West Midlands | Wiltshire | Worcestershire | Yorkshire | Scotland | Wales | Northern Ireland | Republic of Ireland |

If you know of any fountains that I've not included please send me details.

Fountains sorted non-geographically

A number of common themes connect the various MDFCTA drinking fountains.

A brief note on the colour coding used in the various details pages.

A background colour of white indicates an extant fountain that I am certain, or very confident, can be assigned to a "structure number" in the MDFCTA records.

A background colour of green indicates an extant fountain that I have tentatively assigned to an MDFCTA structure number.

A background colour of magenta indicates an extant fountain that has the same size and shape as an MDFCTA structure but doesn't match any structure in the MDFCTA records.

A background colour of grey indicates an extant fountain that I'm pretty confident is not an MDFCTA structure, but has been included for completeness only.

A background colour of yellow (yellow) indicates an extant fountain that is definitely an MDFCTA structure but which has been moved, often very far, from its original location which makes it difficult to assign to an MDFCTA structure number. If you have any comments on my tentative assignments please let me know.

Cattle Troughs

Because a number of MDCFTA cattle troughs have been stolen they are excluded from this survey of structures. Please click here for more details.

Page last updated 20 June 2021 15:02:02