British Berkefeld® is an English brand whose main activity is the manufacture of water purification systems. It is the heir to a long history that began in England in the early 19th century.
John DOULTON was a small businessman who founded his first pottery on the outskirts of London in 1815. He made clay bricks and crockery. Among the many children in the DOULTON family was Henry, an ingenious child with an interest in science, who experimented with making all sorts of objects from clay. He soon concentrated on designing pipes to carry liquids, and discovered the filtering properties of this material.
As fate would have it, cholera and typhoid broke out in London and spread through the population, with the waters of the Thames contaminated by the discharge of sewage. Henry, now an employee of the family business, concentrated on the manufacture and development of ceramic pipes and filters, and set about selling this principle for purifying water and taking his expertise all over England. Very soon, this filtration process was being used in many homes, providing them with drinking water.
Today, British Berkefeld® / Doulton filters are the modern legacy of those made over 200 years ago by John and Henry and are still manufactured in England, south of Manchester. They are used in homes all over the world, and although ceramic is no longer used on its own and its design has been modernised and improved, it has proved its effectiveness in filtering impurities, parasites and bacteria.
