Eyewitness - 26 March 2010
The history of the 'smallest room', advice for teenage Quakers, and more
The smallest room has a history Plumbing has never been our strong point but we have been fascinated by the discoveries we have made – and which readers have pointed us to – on the history of the world’s sanitation systems, after Eye’s story on loo-twinning for Burundi (5 March). Who would have thought that flush toilets were available in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries BC, in the Indus Valley and on Knossos? And those great plumbers, the Romans, installed them throughout the Empire, even as far afield as Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall. Sadly, the flush loo moved out with the Romans before our homegrown plumbers had mastered the technique. It was some time before a flush was heard in Britain again.
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