Description

TL 58 NW DOWNHAM PYMORE

2/18 Hundred Foot
Pumping Station

II*

Pumping station. 1830, designed by Joseph Gwynne for the Littleport and
Downham Commissioners, replacing a windmill, one of seventy-five in the
area. Gault brick, slate and corrugated asbestos roofs. Three storey engine
house with wheelhouse to right hand and boiler room and workshop, originally
the coking shed, to left hand. Gabled elevation to engine house has double
sliding doors at ground floor, and one round arched and one flat arched fixed
light windows with cast iron glazing bars at first and second floors; and two
plaques inscribed 'These fens have of times been by Water drown'd, Science a
remedy in Water found, The power of Steam she said shall be employ'd, And the
Destroyer by Itself destroy'd - Erected AD 1830: and 'Littleport and Downham
District Commissioners Hundred Foot Pumping stn, 1756 windmill. 1830 Steam
engine eight scoop wheel 41ft diameter. 1882. Scoop wheel increased to 50
ft. 1914. 400hp Gwynnes Steam Engine and pump replace scoop wheel and
displaced 200 tons a minute. 1926 230hp Mirrlees oil-engine, 1951 Ruston Oil
Engine 540hp replaces Gwynne engine. Interior: The 1914 pump is still in
use powered by the Ruston Oil Engine which replaced the original engine. The
paved second floor and stair is intact, the lower galleries have been
removed. The boilers in the boiler house have been converted for diesel oil
storage. The original engine was designed to pump water at two speeds into
the tidal river, the second wheel with 50ft diameter was the largest in the
fens. The station was built on a raft of 600 piles with 300,000 bricks. It
is shortly to be replaced by a new pumping station to be built on the site of
the engine house built in 1926 for the Mirrlees oil engine.

Hills, R.L: Machines Mills and Uncountable Costly Necessity 1967
Alderton, D and Booker, J: Batsford Guide to the Industrial Archaeology
of East Anglia 1980
V.C.H. p.90
Pevsner: Buildings of England p331
Country Life, Vol. 138, p875, 1965

Listing NGR: TL5076489150

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17543560

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)
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