The Myddelton service and lunch went ahead on Wednesday 29th January. The service was held in St Mary-at-Hill followed by a walk in the rain to Trinity House for lunch. We were pleased to welcome the Lord Mayor Alderman Fiona Woolf CBE and the Lord Mayors Consort Mr Nicholas Woolf along with many guests including Alderman Andrew Parmley, Mr Richard Agutter the Prime Warden of the Goldsmiths Company and the Dr Heather McLaughlin, Master of the World Traders. Several members of the Myddelton family attended as well as the Mayor of Ruthin Councillor Rosie Hughes-Moseley. The Mayor brought to the celebration the silver chalice which Hugh Myddelton had presented to the town in 1617. I had the pleasure of presenting a specially bound copy of ‘Reflections on water’ to the Lord Mayor. Over lunch the Lord Mayor commented on what a lively bunch we were.
I have attached the Lord Mayor’s address;
Master, Wardens, fellow Aldermen, Ladies and Gentlemen.
I am delighted to respond on behalf of the guests and thank you for your most generous hospitality and also for your contribution to the Lord Mayor’s Appeal, and for this book, which I will treasure. It is such a delight to be here today! I have many watery affiliations – I am a proud member of the Plumbers’ Company, and a long-serving board member and Director – until very recently – of Affinity Water, which serves London and the Home Counties. Affinity is company that cares about the standards of plumbing and the sustainability of its resources – just as YOU do! The Water Conservators, and the rest of the “Wet 10” group of livery companies are an enormous force for good, and may I commend you on your efforts to improve knowledge of water conservation and even more importantly respect for our environment.
This is now more important than ever. We all share a huge responsibility to husband our very constrained natural resources in a sustainable way for a growing global, and increasingly urban, population – and one which is facing the uncertainties of climate change. It is a massive challenge – and one in which the energy, expertise and innovation of the City of London is fully engaged – and I am delighted that I can, as Lord Mayor, shine a light on the opportunities that these challenges represent.
This year, we’re running a ‘Tomorrow’s City’ programme which looks to the future at long-term value creation, through the sustainable infrastructure and financing necessary to tackle population growth, energy and water supply, food supply, and climate change.
The City of London is a very good place to discuss, and lead on, infrastructure financing and delivery, which reflects my own background. The City’s institutions and financial markets play an essential role in mobilising capital, devising legal structures – and assessing, managing and, I suggest, accepting risk. This is important for all infrastructure, especially water.
And, of course, we’re surrounded by the infrastructure projects of centuries. Bazalgette’s sewers lie beneath the Mansion House, I’m proud to say – as does the London underground. And, in November, I even plumbed the depths of the earth to visit the cavern which will become the Eastern tickethall of Crossrail’s Farringdon station. I have to say, the Lord Mayor’s Consort was incredibly jealous.
But I’m reminded too of my distinguished predecessor Sir Richard – Dick – Whittington. A generous, and clearly a very practical, man. Among his many benefactions to Londoners was, no less than, a 64-seater public privy in the Ward of Vintry, designed to be flushed by the Thames tides.
Of course, today we celebrate another visionary, who vastly improved the health and sanitation of our City. Without him, London would simply not be the pre-eminent global City that it is today. Hugh Myddleton accomplished an extraordinary feat of engineering, and your Company is an honour to his achievements. I’m sure the Myddeltons present today would agree! Through bursary support for science students at universities and schools, and your partnership with Thames Water to enrich schools projects, you are making a sterling contribution to science and the needs of the modern world.
We need to listen to the scientists and to use science in the City to inform the decisions we make and the services we offer. And this is a message from Sir Mark Walport, the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, that I have offered to carry. It felt like a charming arm-lock at the time.
You will have seen the recent press about the woefully low number of UK graduates in STEM subjects. The Royal Society of Engineering says we need 100,000 a year just to maintain the Status Quo. At present, only 23,000 engineers graduate in the UK each year. Meanwhile, India produces eight times as many, and China twenty times as many!
There is also, and I am very embarrassed to say this, a major gender imbalance. At the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in November, the Prime Minister said: “At the moment, the UK has the lowest ratio in Europe for women in STEM subjects and in engineering, less than 1 in 6 graduates are women. That’s simply not good enough.” Words I echo.
I spent most of my time on the Women’s Business Council (set up by the Government Equalities Office) on ways to counteract the early stage gender stereotyping – that somehow STEM is just not girl’s stuff. Heaven knows, there are plenty of female role models. Female Nobel Prize winners. Just think of Marie Curie!
So no, it isn’t good enough! And that is why I have commissioned a new work stream in the City Corporation’s Education Strategy to look at ways we can get young people from every background – and both genders – interested in STEM. Master, we would welcome the experience and expertise of the Water Conservators in this area, and I will ensure your Company is involved in upcoming events.
Master, it is fitting that we pay tribute to Sir Hugh Myddleton here in Trinity House, a building whose mandate is also as important today as ever it was – managing the safety of our ships and seafarers since the 1500s.
And as Lord Mayor, I am very proud to wear the hat, which I don’t often wear, of Admiral of the Port of London – although my role is a little less ‘vigorous’ than the female Admiral ‘Artemisia’, also the 5th Century Queen Caria, who assisted an invasion of Greece. I’m not intending on fitting out any Port Authority launches for this purpose!
There are not many records of women on ships – unless they came to the Captain’s attention for some reason.. such as from an extract from the Captain’s log in 1794. During action on “the Glorious First of June” during the Napoleanic Wars, Mrs. Daniel McKenzie, of H.M.S. Tremendous, went into labour prematurely and delivered her son in the bread room. The infant was named Daniel Tremendous McKenzie!
Master – ‘tremendous’ also applies to this lunch, and this Company. In return for all you do, please accept a pewter candlestick from the Alderman of the small and perfectly-formed ward of Candlewick, at the heart of the City. It stands on three Celtic knots – to represent my Scottish roots!
And for your Clerk, a very elegant and long-handled coffee spoon as a memento of a rather wet Lord Mayor’s Show – because we know how much coffee and energy a Clerk needs to do his Master’s bidding!
And now can I ask you all, save you Master, to rise while I propose a toast -The Toast is:
“The Worshipful Company of Water Conservators, Root and Branch, may it flourish for ever”
And my response;
Wardens, my Lord Mayor, Mr Alderman, Prime Warden, Master, your Worship, liverymen, ladies and gentlemen,
Lord Mayor, thank you for your best wishes for the future of the Water Conservators’ Company. Thank you too for expanding on how the Livery can improve our impact on the UK’s share of world trade; as Conservators we would be happy to combine that with improving the habitat, society and economy for less favoured people and places.
This Myddleton lunch is a special one for us because in Sept 2013 we celebrated the 400th anniversary of the opening of Sir Hugh Myddelton’s New River. The event is also special for me because Sir Hugh was a man of Denbighshire and lived in Ruthin, my adopted home town.
Ruthin has joined in our celebrations today. We have on the table in front of us the Myddleton Chalice dated 1616 which Hugh presented to Ruthin in the following year; it has been brought to London to mark this occasion by the Mayor. Rosie, please convey our thanks to the Town Council for their kind gesture.
On completion of the New River Hugh found that his fortune had been severely depleted so he took-up leases of lead and silver mines in Cardiganshire which were very profitable. By the 1970s the mines had been long-abandoned and were identified as sources of heavy metal pollution in adjacent houses and rivers. Grass, an effective protection against erosion, had fled because of the toxicity caused by the lead left in finely-ground wastes piled on the surface and subject to erosion by wind and water. 20th century miners performed no differently.
Long, long before I realised that as Master I would be celebrating his work, I was responsible for rehabilitating Hugh’s mines at Cwmsymolog, Cwmerfyn and Bwlch. Toxic wastes were buried; surfaces were stabilised using newly-discovered metal-tolerant grasses; air-borne pollution was eliminated, river qualities improved.
As usual, we had some lighter moments. At Bwlch we came across some of the rarest lichens in Europe; lichens lead a quiet life, they lie there and grow extremely slowly; by way of contrast lichenologists were excited, excitable and troublesome. We took pleasure in accommodating the lichens. Given half a chance we would have buried the lichenologists. The ‘ravioli principle’ referred to in the caption on the menu card is how I explained encapsulation of toxic waste to Italian engineers.
Hugh Myddleton was a man with foresight; emotion drove him to solve problems, and he used his free will to apply solutions; three great attributes of someone who leads from the front, which is exactly what Hugh did. A great deal of learning about the supply and distribution of water followed Hugh’s lead. London has been the spur to this approach of leading and then generating learning from emerging futures a great many times over; think John Snow and Brunel in our fields; clearly the approach is not new, indeed it is as old as leadership itself, it works and brings great rewards to those prepared to run on emotion and have the will to act.
Lord Mayor, my over-arching theme for the year is that the Company must prepare to become Globally Useful. Already we are learning from an emerging future; writing personal Perspectives on good practice in engineering and environmental fields is a new challenge for Conservators, the aim is to disseminate our skills in education, consultancy, contracting and manufacturing. We are enthusiastic supporters of the WET 10 group of Livery Companies. Two of our past-masters will become co-chairmen in March. Please, Conservators, join us at the Wet 10 meeting on 24th Feb.; details are on the web site.
Our Conservation Trust supports postgraduates at 12 universities and science topics in schools. We plan to spend about £100,000 in the next academic year. Through the Trust we have a growing relationship with Thames Water that involves water-based projects in the Thames valley. At the Election Court lunch in April we will be hearing about multicultural sustainability in London schools. Today’s collection will support the important work of the Trust.
Finally, I would remind Conservators that unlike slow-growing, ground-hugging lichens, we can choose to fly. A friend wrote 3 poems to me for the New Year, as both a prompt and a challenging thought, here are a few lines from ‘Fly high’;
As you turn
Will you let the eagle
Take you
High
Beyond where you have ever ventured
He holds the world within his gaze
Come fly high
Come fly high
As you rise
Will you let radiance
Lift you
High
Beyond where you have dared to venture
Taken and held within the eagle's gaze
