Cragend Farm Hydraulic Silo

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 21 August 2023 to amend details in the description

NU 00 SE 17/10

CARTINGTON CRAGEND Hydraulic silo building 45 metres east of Cragend Farmhouse

(Formerly listed as Hydraulic silo building 70 metres east of Cragend Farmhouse)

II*

An experimental hydraulic silo built between August 1884 and January 1887, by Lord Armstrong. Snecked stone with tooled-and-margined dressings; Welsh slate roof to centre, original heavy corrugated iron on side parts and C20 asbestos sheets on loading bay. Linear plan: rectangular silage bay on each side of taller cross-gabled centre.

North elevation. Gabled centre has boarded double doors with similar pitching doors above, both in chamfered surrounds; lower side parts have slit vents. To right, below slit vents is pent roof of loading bay, entered at lower level by segmental arch holding boarded double doors on right return. Side parts have barrel roof.

Interior; centre part has single-cylinder hydraulic engine in basement (not seen as access stair is unsafe); turbine on entrance level and chopping machine on first floor, now removed. Flanking silage bays are deep chambers, rendered internally, with the floor area of each containing 18 large stone drums. Transverse steel girders below roof; steel arched roof trusses.

The hydraulic silo is said to have been based on a French original seen by Lord Armstrong. Grass was forked in through the pitching door to the chopping machine powered by the turbine below, which was operated by water pumped up from the hydraulic engine; the chopped grass was then manually loaded into the silage bays; when these were full it was compacted beneath the stone drums, which had been raised to the transverse girders by hydraulic power. Hoists for lifting silage (and men) from the bays were also hydraulically operated; the silage was then dropped down a chute from the entrance door into the low-level loading bay, and removed.

The process was not very efficient in terms of manpower required, and was soon abandoned due to problems of gas emanation; the power source was lost when Blackburn Lake was drained c.1930.

Listing NGR: NU0870600882