Place Name
Opened in 1937, this Art Deco residential block was named after the dolphin, a pump used for drawing water from the nearby River Thames at the mouth of the Westbourne Brook. The mechanism was housed in a half submerged conical building resembling a summerhouse by The Grand Junction Water-Works Company in 1820, providing water for “7,000 families at the west end of the town, including the great squares and streets, the great club-houses, coffee-houses, hotels, &c.” Within a few years however questions were being raised about the state of the supply, not least because by then the Westbourne was an open sewer. In 1827 a pamphleteer claimed the water was in a “state offensive to the sight, disgusting to the imagination, and destructive to health” and the dolphin itself “a wooden-headed, dingy-coloured, ill-shaped, insidious engine of destruction” and “a box, more crammed with the seeds of all kinds of diseases than that of Pandora”. This caused a considerable outcry and a campaign led by Sir Francis Burdett, MP for Westminster, resulted in the appointment of the first Royal Commission to inquire into the quality of the water to be supplied by the metropolitan water companies.
Discover the stories of over 4,000 street names across Greater London here.
