Cattle Trough - London Wall, London, UK - Historic Upping Stones, Hitching Posts, and Carriage Blocks on Waymarking.com

With these troughs it is difficult to tell if they are in their original location or if they have been moved.

The long sides of the trough both bear the same inscription:
"Metropolitan Drinking Fountain & Cattle Trough Association".

Wikipedia (visit link) gives some insight into the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain & Cattle Trough Association:
"The Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association was an association set up in London by Samuel Gurney a Member of Parliament and philanthropist and Edward Thomas Wakefield, a barrister, in 1859 to provide free drinking water. Originally called the Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain Association it changed its name to include cattle troughs in 1867, to also support animal welfare.

Water provision in the nineteenth century was from nine private water companies each with a geographic monopoly, which provided inadequate quantities of water which was often contaminated, as was famously discovered by John Snow during the 1854 cholera epidemic. Population growth in London had been very rapid (more than doubling between 1800 and 1850) without an increase in infrastructure investment. Legislation in the mid nineteenth century gradually improved the situation; the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers was formed, water filtration was made compulsory, and water intakes on the Thames were forced to be moved above the sewage outlets.

In this environment the public drinking fountain movement began, initially in Liverpool where the local government was granted the ability to buy out the private water companies in 1847. It built the first public baths and then encouraged philanthropic public drinking water fountains. This was taken up by Samuel Gurney.

The Society was inaugurated in 1859 with the requirement "That no fountain be erected or promoted by the Association which shall not be so constructed as to ensure by filters, or other suitable means, the perfect purity and coldness of the water." The first fountain was built on Holborn Hill on the railings of the church of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate on Snow Hill, paid for by Samuel Gurney, and opened on 21 April 1859. It was moved in 1867 when the Holborn Viaduct was built but reinstated in 1913 where it remains.

The fountain became immediately popular, used by 7000 people a day. In the next six years 85 fountains were built, but much of the funding came directly from the association; much of that money was provided directly by Samuel Gurney, as donations were not sufficient.

Gradually the association became more widely accepted, benefitting from its association with Evangelical Christianity and the Temperance movement. Beer was the main alternative to water, and generally safer. The temperance societies had no real alternative as tea and coffee were too expensive, so drinking fountains were very attractive. Many were sited opposite public houses. The evangelical movement was encouraged to build fountains in churchyards to encourage the poor to see churches as supporting them. Many fountains have inscriptions such as "Jesus said whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again but whosoever drinketh of the water I shall give him shall never thirst". By 1877, the association was widely accepted and Queen Victoria donated money for a fountain in Esher."

Strangely, the Wikipedia entry, mentioned above, has a photograph of this cattle trough!