Mill Meece Pumping Station |
||
Visiting The Site TodayVisitors now enter the pumping station through a side door near the base of the chimney, this leads to the 'Sutherland Room'. This was added as an extension to the engine house in 1937 to accomodate the standby electric pumps. These are no longer present, the room currently housing an exhibition of artefacts and displays, including a number of impressive black & white photographs of other pumping stations in the area.
 From the "Sutherland Room" visitors move into the main engine house, which houses the two engines built by Aston Frost and Hawthorne Davey. Although the later engine is an almost mirror copy of the earlier example, there are a number of minor differences, one of the more obvious being a different type of barring engine. (The small barring engine is used to slowly position the main engine at the correct angle for starting.) Leading from the engine house are two further rooms, the first taking visitors to the rear of the boiler house. The boilers were fitted with an economiser, this used the waste gases from the fire to preheat the feed water before it reached the boiler. The disadvantage with economisers was their tendency to clog up with soot, the example fitted at Mill Meece has a mechanical mechanism to keep the elements scrubbed clean - unfortunately this no longer functions.
   The second room accessed from the engine house is the office, this small room contains a desk and three impressive chart recorders that were used to measure the flow of water from the pumping station to Hanchurch reservoir. Since the pumps have been disconnected these recorders no longer operate, although their mechanical clocks are still kept running.
Access to the boiler room is obtained by returning to the outside of the building and entering through a door at the front of the boiler house. Inside you are met with the three imposing Lancashire boilers (Lancashire boilers have two fire tubes, Cornish boilers have one). The boilers are still fired by the mechanical stokers fitted in 1965, these feed a measured amount of coal into the firebox at an adjustable time interval. The feed water is fed to the boiler from two Weir pumps situated in an adjoining room.
  A small brick building opposite the boiler room houses two 10 ton winches, these were used during maintenance of the bore holes to lift the pumps and rodding. On open days they are left to slowly turn over on display. |
||
| All photographs are the work and copyright of Ian Cooper. | ||
