Prior to the use of cars and trucks, horses were extensively used to
deliver goods to and from shops in Sandringham. These included
daily deliveries of ice, bread, and milk to individual homes up to
the 1960s in Bayside. Any horse manure dropped along the road
was quickly scooped up by residents to put on their gardens.

George Bills and his wife Annis were both born in England in the
mid-1800s and had no children. George died in 1927 and, in his
will, he asked for a trust fund to be set up to, ‘construct and erect
and pay for horse troughs wherever they may be of the opinion
that such horse troughs are desirable for the relief of horses and
other dumb animals either in Australasia, in the British Islands or
in any other part of the world subject to the consent of the proper
authorities being obtained‘. Over 700 troughs were installed
between 1930 and 1939, most of them in Victoria and New South
Wales. The majority of troughs were a standard design in precast
concrete, manufactured in Hawthorn.

Some of the troughs had a bowl at the base, for dogs to drink from.
Surprisingly, elephants from a visiting circus may also have drunk
from this trough when they were seen in Waltham Street, c1958.