By the middle of the nineteenth century, spirits had largely replaced beer as the staple tipple in the cities of England, and the gin-shop was often the only warm, well-lit place available in the evening as an alternative to the mean dwelling-house that represented Home for the majority of the urban population. Getting drunk constituted one of the main pleasures of life, providing an escape from its sordid realities; but the pleasure had its price in the resulting misery of debt, poverty, eviction, violence and the break-up of family life. It is no wonder that reformers sprang up to point out the evils of drink, and that the temperance movement came into being.

One of the earliest temperance societies, the Band of Hope (1847) aimed at persuading children to 'take the pledge' of total abstinence before they had acquired the taste for alcohol. The Salvation Army (founded as the East London Mission in 1865) was also an active campaigner against drink, as were the Non-Conformist churches and, eventually, the Church of England Temperance Society. Legislation to control public-houses was not introduced until 1904 when Balfour's Licensing Act was passed - in the teeth of opposition from the brewing companies.

Meanwhile, reform was in the hands of voluntary organisations and of individuals who encouraged abstinence and often provided alternatives to gin-shops and public-houses. In Oxford, these alternatives included the provision of 'dry' meeting-places, such as the house at 65 Old High Street, Headington, where a stone records that the site was given in 1880 by a Mrs Ballachey and the buildings were erected at the expense of a Miss Nichol 'for the promotion of temperance in this parish'. The house continued as a temperance club, The British Workman, until 1939. A similar venture, which still thrives, was the Merry Bells, a 'dry' pub at Wheatley, founded in 1888 by Mrs Miller of Shotover House. (The temperance movement must have been particularly strong in Headington with the founding in 1887 of the Headington Temperance Band which later became the City of Oxford Silver Band. )

Another alternative to the pub was the drinking-fountain, which it was hoped would encourage temperance. When the City established its first Free Library and Reading Room in 1863 in the old Town Hall in St Aldates, a drinking-fountain was provided in the hope that readers would quench their thirst with pure water. Two outdoor drinking-fountains survive in the city from this period, Walton Well (1885) and the Victoria Fountain (1899), both of which have long ceased to function.

Walton Well fountain, at the corner of Walton Well Street and Longworth Road, bears the following inscription on a black metal plate affixed to it:

With the consent of the Lords of the Manor this drinking-fountain is erected by Mr William Ward to mark the site of a celebrated spring known as Walton Well adjacent to the ancient fordway into Port Meadow known as Walton Ford. Drink and think of him who is the fountain of life. 1885.

It seems that Mr Ward's fountain did not have the desired effect of civilising the lower orders. In 1892 a resident wrote to complain that the fountain had become a centre for local rowdies. "The swearing and fighting especially on Sundays," he complained to the Bursar of St John's College (who had purchased the 'Lordship of the Manor' in 1573), "is more than one can bear. Directly the policeman appears, the boys run off only to return."

Oxford's other drinking-fountain, on the City side of the roundabout at St Clement's, is surmounted by a clock which, unlike the fountain, still works. Round the octagonal base of the clock-tower is a cleverly devised Latin inscription - a hexameter line of eight words, one on each face of the octagon:

(The water drips, the hours go by. Be warned, drink, catch them as they fly)+

Incised in the stone wall above the water-spouts is the date A.D 1899, near which is a metal plate with the inscription:

[Princess Louise (1848-1939), the sixth of Queen Victoria's nine children, married the Marquis of Lorne, later Duke of Argyll, who was for a time Governor General of Canada. The marriage was childless and the Princess devoted much of her time to the arts. She was a competent sculptress among whose works are the marble statue of her mother which stands in front of Kensington Palace overlooking the Round Pond and the South African War Memorial in the south transept of St Paul's Cathedral. In 1890, the sculptor Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm collapsed and died in her studio.]

Four gaping holes near the metal plate suggest that there was formerly a second plate which may have contained the information that the fountain was the gift of the well-known Oxford brewer, G. H. Morrell.

Two stone horse-troughs at the base of the fountain are now planted with flowers.

.* A similar message is to be found at St Edmund Hall where there is a Latin inscription round the inner surface of the coping of the well-head covering the medieval well in the quadrangle:

(You will draw water with joy from the fountain of the Saviour)

+ For this translation the author is indebted to an unsigned article which appeared in The Oxford Times on 26th December 1986.