Dalton Water Pumping Station

COLD HESLEDON

NZ 44 NW STOCKTON ROAD 488-/4/1 (East side)

08/02/83 Dalton Water Pumping Station

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.

Further information: Lodge to the north also listed.

Historical note: The engine was the only Cornish engine to use superheated steam; the entablature columns are identical to those at Tees Cottage, 1902 (SAM). The original top stage of the chimney had a 3-light window, as the engine house, to the top of the stair, a section of roof and a narrower further stage with 3-light blind windows, and a final section of sloping roof, with iron crest. Formerly set in an ornamental park with four cooling ponds, with 6 houses for the staff. The design is similar to that of Hawksley's Springfield, 1882 (qv). The high grading reflects the considerable architectural quality of the building, as well as the survival of the original Cornish pumping engines.

Listing NGR: NZ4108246918