Old Pump Station Nov17 (pic pic heavy)

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Blazinhawkz

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 28, 2014
Messages
58
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214
Location
NorthEast
The Pump Station​

Permission visit by pure chance after the neighbours dogs alerted the full town,any way the guy was decent enough to tell us to be back on Saturday and we’d be given access. Very sceptical we turned up at the time given to be greeted by a friendly face. “Why on earth you’d want to get in here is beyond me but I’ll be back in 2 hours,just don’t turn right through that door” two hours just wasn’t enough in here. Hopefully a return visit will happen.

A little history on the place taken from British listed buildings GV II* Water pumping station, disused. 1873-79, by Thomas Hawksley, engineer to the Sunderland and South Shields Water Company. Brick with sandstone dressings and slate hipped roof. Symmetrical axial plan with lateral rear boiler houses and integral chimney and stair tower between. Venetian Gothic Revival style. 2 storeys and basement; 1-window range. Plinth, cill and label bands, moulded eaves cornice and roof with small louvred dormers and decorative iron widow's walk. The entrance front has 3-sided flight of steps up to a coped, gabled ashlar door surround, set forward with 2-centred arched doorway containing 2 attached nook shafts with foliate capitals and a half glazed double door; above is a fine 5-light window with column mullions and label mould. 2-window sides divided by full height buttresses have 2-centre arched ground floor windows with 2 round arched lights and a top oculus in plate tracery, with first-floor flat arched 3-light mullion windows with shouldered heads; small paired basement openings to access the flywheel bearings. All windows blocked at time of Review. Behind is a massive chimney truncated at the top of the stairs with shallow clasping buttresses to a moulded string, and narrow stair lights, encased at the base by a 4-bay boiler house and coal store, each bay with a hipped roof and single light in the ends, with 2-centre arched plate-tracery windows, wider in the third bay with an ashlar tympanum, and paired windows with shouldered heads in the second bay. Interior has a fine and fairly complete engine house containing a pair of 72" single-acting non-rotative beam engine by Davy Bros, 1879, with a heavy Corinthian entablature on moulded square-section tapering cast-iron columns, mezzanine at cylinder head level, with an early gantry crane, and steps down to the borehole; to the rear half-glazed doors at each floor lead from the stair flight round the chimney. The boiler house has a wrought-iron truss roof with elaborate iron spacing brackets. The boilers have been removed.​


Pump Station by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr

Wheel by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr

Pieces by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr

Pump It by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr

Arm by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr

Joint by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr

6 Circles by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr

Tank Tops by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr

Left by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr

Left by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr

Pipes by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr

Bottom Curves by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr

Nuts To This by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr

Little Turns by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr

Big Flat by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr

Chained by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr

On Point by Blazin Hawk, on Flickr


Thanks For Poking
 
Pure magic! It is no wonder that a Victorian writer of the day, described these places as 'The Cathedrals of the Modern World'. I was very fortunate that in the early '60's, my working travels took me through the areas where some of these places were situated - no more interesting location for a flask and sandwich break, especially as there was always somebody there in those days to 'open the door'. Sadly even then there were signs of the scrap man's gas axe and electric pumps appearing; however, on reflection it was probably the sheer size of these installations that saved some of them for future generations. In some cases; the costs and complexity of demolition might have meant that it was cheaper to leave well alone, and just build the new electric pump houses alongside the old Victorian pumps.
 
What a beautiful place!

I think that 'beautiful' is the only word one can use to describe these places. Their builders could have constructed functional equipment, assembled from plain blocks and columns of cast iron; however their imagination allowed them to decorated the plain and functional and produce installations that still bring thoughts of wonderment to the modern beholder. Don't see the present day electric installations having that effect 150 years from now - doubt they will survive that long anyway!
 
Thank you everyone for the kind comments and words,this place has been somewhere Iv wanted to do for a while well years actually this time all we got rumbled was worth he rumble
 
Absolutely spectacular Blazinhawkz!! WOW what a place, real machinery and housed in some great architectural space, not some windowless tin box like today, just love it!

Fantastic collection of images, I'd be right at home here all day, and prob need to revisit lol

Thanks BH, drooled over your pics:glee:
 

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