Olney (click on photograph to bring up bigger/better version).

[Thanks to John Hurst for all the photos.]

		At the Cowper & Newton Museum, Milton Keynes, this curious triangular cross-section pump used to be in the Market place, which is also triangular. It carried a street lamp - now lost - and has an interesting history, an extract of which is below:
		"William Cowper, the poet who lived for 19 years in a house overlooking the Market Place records the resurfacing in one of his letters to John Newton dated February 1782. 'Daniel Raban (baker) has levelled and gravelled the Market Hill, and because water is scarce at Olney, has put the parish to the expense of a town pump, and designs, in order that people may not run their heads against it in the night, to crown it with a lamp. As the people here are not so rich as to be able to afford superfluities, this measure does not give universal satisfaction. I subjoin the only verses I have written for some time, which, however, are not to be published. The pump stands opposite Banister’s door.' Let Banister now lend his aid to furnish shoes for the Baker, Who has put down a pump, with a lamp on its head, For the use of the said Shoe-maker."
		Markings: Two words, the first being estimated to be COOPER, and the second OLNEY. (Thanks to Elizabeth Knight, Archivist at the museum, and her volunteers for taking a closer look for us.] Manufacturer: Unk. Cooper was the name of a nearby ironmonger's 100 years later, but there's no proof, yet, of any link.

Also at the Cowper & Newton Museum, Milton Keynes. Markings: A date "1819" and a leaf design. Manufacturer: Unk.

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