Waterworks at Blagdon: Pumping Station with Receiving Tanks, Blagdon, North Somerset

Summary

A pumping station in Jacobean revival style with two receiving tanks, built in 1902-05 to designs by T & C Hawksley of Westminster, with Charles Hawksley as chief engineer, housing two beam engines by Glenfield & Kennedy Limited of Kilmarnock, Scotland.

Description

MATERIALS: brick walls with ashlar dressings and flush quoins, and plain tiled, pitched roofs with horizontal strip roof lights to each slope, now boarded up, and small louvered ventilation dormers.

PLAN: a U-shaped plan embracing a free standing central square chimney stack, with projecting engine houses to the front, attached to a lower rear range containing a central boiler house, flanked by coal stores, further stores, a dynamo house and a smith shop.

EXTERIOR: the tall gabled engine houses to the east front, with kneelers and ball finials to the apex, are of two storeys with attics. They have segmental headed entrances with nook shafts, foliage capitals and hood moulds with globular leaf stops, and two-leaf studded wooden doors, part-glazed, reached by a series of steps with moulded copings to the side walls. The windows are three and four-light cross-mullions with Caernarvon and Tudor-arched heads containing plate glass casements. Steps lead up to each entrance with moulded copings to the side walls. Stepped buttresses mark the bays to the returns, which have three-and four-light mullions with hood moulds.

The central, square-shaped chimney has a decorative bronze plaque set into its front wall commemorating the opening of the water works and reads: 'Bristol Water Works Company - These Works were completed 1905 - Edward Bush Chairman - T&C Hawksley Engineers'. The stack reaches the height of the engine houses to either side: its top half, removed in the 1960s prior to listing, had decorative tri-partite round arched louvres and cast-iron cresting to the ridge of a tiled roof.

The single storey west range to the rear, with attic, is seven bays wide. The projecting twin outer bays to either side are gabled with kneelers and ball finials to the apex. Segmental headed entrances (with late-C20 replacement doors) give access to the coal stores. Set above each entrance is a three-light mullion window with decorative hood mould. Formerly wagons would drop off the coal here, as the railway branched out to lead right up to each of the entrances. The three central bays each have four-centred arched entrances (with late C20 replacement doors) set in flat surrounds with hood moulds, giving access to the boiler house. The central opening is now obscured by a single storey flat roofed, red brick extension added in the late C20.

The side elevations consist of three bays with stone mullion windows, including one to the projecting gabled bays of the stores, which have three segmental arched entrances with wooden doors to the side, and linking to the side elevations of the engine houses which are described above.

INTERIOR: the interior contains a number of original and bespoke fixtures and fittings, with original carpentry mostly surviving. The highly decorative interiors of the engine houses retain their large cast iron ceiling beams, the stairs leading to the mezzanine level with overhead gantry cranes by Stothert & Pitt to inspect the beam engines, the intersecting tracery to the tall windows, and the two trefoil-panelled piers with lotus-type capitals. The two beam engines by Glenfield & Kennedy in the south engine house survive.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: two rectangular shaped, stone lined suction tanks, now used for fish rearing, holding a maximum of 567000 gallons of water. Designed as decorative formal garden ponds in a Baroque style with curved stone edging and rounded corners, they are positioned symmetrically to the east front of the pumping station. The metal security railings surrounding each tank were introduced in the late-C20.

SETTING: the pumping station and receiving tanks are situated in triangular shaped grounds approached by a drive from the south and planted with mature specimen trees. To its north are the outlet and by-wash (qv) with decorative woodland beyond, and to the east it is enclosed by the steeply rising grass bank forming the dam at Blagdon with the reservoir behind.

EXCLUSIONS: the small late C20 flat roofed extension to the rear of the pumping station does not have special interest and is excluded from the designation. Similarly, the modern, late C20 plant machinery inside the pumping station, is not of special interest, nor does it contribute to the special interest of the pumping station building and the remaining historic plant, and as such is not included in the designation.

History

The waterworks at Blagdon, Somerset, built by the Bristol Waterworks Company (now Bristol Water) in 1898-1905, were authorised by two Acts of Parliament in 1888 and 1889. They were designed and constructed under the direction of Charles Hawksley of the engineers firm T & C Hawksley of Westminster in a decorative Jacobean style, to house engines and boilers designed and constructed by Hydraulic & Sanitary Engineers Glenfield & Kennedy Limited of Kilmarnock, Scotland. The latter were installed at Blagdon in 1904, and are believed to be the last of the water pumping beam engines that were installed at waterworks in England throughout the C19, the oldest being those at Kew, Greater London.
Charles Hawksley (1839-1917) was a civil engineer, educated at University College School, London. He was the son of civil engineer Thomas Hawksley, who had his firm in Westminster. Charles became his apprentice in 1854, and in 1866 was taken into partnership by his father. After his father's death in 1893 he became head of the firm. Charles' professional work was principally in connection with waterworks: parts of those at Catcleugh, near Rochester are listed, as are those at Butterley, Kirklees. Charles was a prominent figure in the Committee Rooms in Parliament during his career, where he frequently gave evidence as a technical expert. In 1901 he became President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and in 1907 established the Thomas Hawksley Fund to provide an annual lecture and medal in memory of his father. In honour of Charles, the Institution of Civil Engineers awards the Charles Hawksley Prize.
The Bristol Waterworks Company (BW) was formally established on 16 July 1846 by an Act of Parliament. Their plans for supplying fresh water from the Mendips to the entire city of Bristol, were weighed up by the Government against those submitted by a rival group, the Society of Merchant Venturers, which was backed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, seeking only to supply water to the wealthier parts of Bristol. The BW was led by prominent local citizens, including William Budd, a physician, George Thomas, a Quaker and philanthropist and Francis and Richard Fry, also Quakers and local industrialists. In 1847 the BW managed to build a 16km long Line of Works conduit to bring fresh water into Bristol. Sand filters were added to treat the water and chlorination was introduced in 1935. Their first reservoir was created in 1850 at Barrow, followed by those at Blagdon, which included the pumping station, Cheddar (early 1930s) and Chew Stoke (1956). Despite the widespread move from private to public ownership of water supplies in the mid- to late C19, as encouraged by the government, BW was one of very few companies in England that remained privately owned.
In preparation for the building of the waterworks at Blagdon, an Inspector’s House was built on raised ground in order to oversee the construction of the earth dam for the reservoir started in 1898. Whilst the reservoir started to fill, reaching its top level in 1903, works on the pumping station began in 1902. The Bristol Waterworks Company supported the construction of the Wrington Vale Light Railway by the Great Western Railway, started in 1898 and opened in 1901. A public station was built and a short branch with siding station (disused since 1950) led to the pumping station, initially to deliver building materials and later to supply coal. The construction of the reservoir, with dam, valve house and road bridge and the pumping station with receiving tanks, outlet and by-wash, are extensively documented in a set of photographs of c1902 (private collection). It also included a small meter house (now a bat sanctuary), and sewage works, now disused (in separate ownership) and replaced in the later C20 with new works nearer the pumping station (in separate ownership).

As reported by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1908 and 1930, the watershed area draining to the Yeo reservoir was c2144ha, and when full the reservoir’s area of surface water covered c182ha, with a capacity of holding well over 1770 million gallons of water. During the construction of its c485m long embankment dam with a maximum height of 13m, a tunnel with a 3m diameter was in use for the passage of floods, which had two sets of valves. The puddle trench of the dam was one of the deepest in England: its construction presented great difficulty as it was found necessary to excavate to a depth of c53m below the valley bottom before an impervious foundation in the red marl was secured. The length of the weir at the head of the by-wash for carrying off floodwater was c55m.

The pumping station consisted of two engine houses with a tall decorative chimney (truncated in the 1960s), each containing two Woolf compound rotative beam engines, a boiler house containing six Lancashire boilers and two sets of Green’s economisers, two coal stores and a number of workshops to the rear. Two receiving tanks, each with a capacity of 567000 gallons, were supplied with water from the Yeo reservoir, and by cast iron pipes from the Rickford and Langford springs. In 1949 two of the beam engines were replaced with smaller electric pumps. The other two have been preserved, one fitted with an electric motor to show it in action. In the 1960s, the tall, decorative central chimney stack to the pumping station was lowered.

After completion of the pumping station, the grounds were laid out as ornamental gardens, planted with a large number of specimen trees such as Scots pine, Cedar, Larch, Spruce, Oak, Beech, Chestnut, Willow, Lime, Holly and Maple. Extensive ornamental woodland planting also took place around the reservoir, and a grass perimeter walk was laid out, as proposed in 1900. It was probably around that date that the Fishing Lodge was built, on the edge of the reservoir, matching the rustic timber framed style of the nearby Inspection House.

In the later C20 some of the land and properties associated with the waterworks at Blagdon were sold, including the former Inspection House, and replacement sewage works and an electrical substation were built to the rear of the pumping station. Since then, the weir at the top of the bye-wash has been replaced, retaining the decorative, curved inspection bridge which was relocated further downstream where it crosses the bye-wash. Today (2014) the pumping station remains in use, and the 1960s replacement pump engine is currently (2014) being replaced by a new model. As part of these works a new valve house is constructed on the dam, south of the earlier valve house (itself a later replacement). The meter house standing on the southern edge of the reservoir is now a bat sanctuary. The Inspection House, now in separate ownership, is in use as a private dwelling. Blagdon Lodge has remained in use as a fishing lodge: the receiving tanks in front of the pumping station now in use to rear fish for the reservoir.

Reasons for Listing

The pumping station and two receiving tanks at the waterworks in Blagdon, Somerset, are listed at Grade II* for the following main reasons:

Architectural & engineering interest: despite being a relatively late example of its type, Blagdon is a particularly complete, successful and architecturally distinct pumping station of 1902-05 designed by the nationally important civil engineer and architect Charles Hawksley, housing two beam engines manufactured by Glenfield & Kennedy, a rare survival;

Historic interest: it has a particularly strong and interesting historic association with the Bristol Waterworks Company, whose founders philanthropic ideas and ambitions are fully expressed in the building;

Intactness: it has survived remarkably intact, with two out of the four original beam engines surviving in situ in their original engine house;

Group value: it has particularly strong and important group value with its associated contemporary structures also designed by Charles Hawksley, and which are listed separately at Grade II.

External Links

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