Water fight: the battle for London’s Victorian drinking fountains

Heritage charity says many ‘renovated’ monuments are filled with cement, not water, so can’t quench thirst or help reduce plastic pollutionThey were a much-loved feature of London life for over a century, ever since the first of hundreds of public drinking fountains opened in 1859 at St Sepulchre-without-Newgate church in the City.At its peak, thousands of people a day were drinking from it and Charles Dickens observed that “300,000 people take advantage of the fountains