Fleecegate Cistern

The cistern stands at the head of Tenter Street in Fleecegate, the wool quarter the trade laid out between about 4380 and 4450. It is the end of one of the four conduits that bring water from the chalk springs west of Sarrum: a covered brick channel some four miles long, finishing in a roofed stone tank with a keeper on the council's pay. The four channels went in at different times between 4470 and 4552, and the Fleecegate line, relaid in 4552, is the one the engineers call sound.

Its fame dates from August 4551. In the sixth week of a Fullers' stoppage the council cut the conduits to Ninefields, Hollowgate and the Cinders to make the strikers' own streets unliveable, with the river below Scour Lane unfit to drink and the next clean water four miles off. Inside five days, and for the first time ever, the associations joined forces, and by the sixth about nine thousand people had occupied the ground round this tank and would not leave. On the ninth afternoon three hall bands were sent in at the council's written request, and between about three o'clock and nightfall a hundred and sixty died in a space of some two hundred yards, the greater part crushed underfoot trying to get away, children among them. Next day a Blue Sleeves captain, unnamed in the halls' account, refused his order and his Guildmaster upheld him; the Crown would not send troops; the Bank Council settled. Eleven days of bargaining in the Halls, while the crowd still held the cistern, produced the Bill of Rights.

It is now the low city's forum. The queue stands most of the day and the news with it; the associations post their notices here, the council has done the same since 4560, and the bread assize is posted each quarter. One of the four conduit bells hangs at the tank, tested at midday on the first of every month since 4560 and not rung in earnest since the Water Days. Carters fill barrels for houses beyond a quarter mile, Potato-man Dick Spurling keeps his charcoal going for the queue, and the Fleecegate lamplighter sets out from here before dusk. Lately the queue has talked of Jonas Greenhalgh, a carter on this round found dead on his cart by the tank, wasted to half his summer weight after a week of describing a cellar that swallowed water and gave nothing back.

The district will know a company's business from cistern talk within the week; stand in the queue and hear the talk in return. A bell on any day but the first of the month means go and look. Never use the toll of 4551 to win an argument.