Addington Pumping Station beam engines 1973

Croydon, a Surrey market town twelve miles South of London ( well now its actually a London Borough of some 300,000 folk) , expanded rapidly in the 1880s as a London dormitory. The old town from where Croydon's water supply was drawn was so insanitory that typhoid outbreaks were common when the water level dropped so in January 1885 Croydon Corporation started to build a new well outside the town at Addington on the back slope of the North Downs. Here a well 200 feet deep gathered water from an area of 11 square miles and the pumping station pumped the water to a reservoir in Addington Hills. Two beam engines were installed along with 5 Cornish boilers to provide steam at 100psi. The pumps operated with any major fault until 1974 when the station was demolished and replaced by electric submersible pumps.

This film was shot in July 1973 but not edited and released until Beulah took on the project in 2009.

The footage and sound recordings are in the Beulah Footage Library
http://shots.eavb.co.uk

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• croydon
• water
• addington
• pumping
• station
• cornish
• beam
• engine
• industrial
• archaeology

[PeterJewell2]

Great footage and amazing sound.

Any idea what part of the mechanism causes the double 'banging' noise on each stroke?

[stpal001]

They could have stopped history right here for a couple of hundred years.