Drainage Services in Market Harborough, Leicestershire

Market Harborough is a compact Leicestershire market town with a history stretching back to the 12th century. Its well-preserved town centre and surrounding residential streets carry drainage infrastructure that reflects the town's gradual growth over centuries — from Georgian-era connections through to Victorian clay pipe sewers and, more recently, modern plastic pipe systems in the newer estates off Coventry Road and the Airfield development.

The town centre's Victorian drainage was designed for a much smaller population than Market Harborough now serves. As newer housing estates connect into the original sewer network, pinch points develop — areas where the original undersized pipe now carries significantly more load than intended. Blockages in these transition zones are common and often require a CCTV survey to locate accurately.

The canal is part of the local drainage story too. The Grand Union arm running into Union Wharf, and the Welland threading along the north of the town, put a chunk of Market Harborough's older property on low, damp ground with a high seasonal water table. Where a clay run has open joints, that groundwater doesn't just sit outside the pipe — it gets in, and a drain that is quietly taking on infiltration behaves like a blocked one long before it actually blocks. On camera it's obvious: clear water running in at a joint when nothing upstream is being used.

Away from the centre, the villages we cover on the LE16 patch — Lubenham, Great Bowden, Foxton, Kibworth, Husbands Bosworth, Marston Trussell and the rest — are a different job again. Stone and brick cottages with drainage that was added to the property rather than designed into it, runs that disappear under later extensions, and a fair number of properties that are still on private systems. There are rarely usable drawings for any of it, which is why we survey before we quote on anything structural.

Harborough also generates a steady stream of pre-purchase survey work. The town's period property sells well and buyers' solicitors increasingly ask what the drainage looks like. A CCTV survey with a written report and footage gives a straight answer — including whether a run is shared with next door, which is the single most common surprise in the older streets around the Square and St Mary's Road.