Brindley Bank Pumping Station

Brindley Bank Pumping Station is a water pumping station built between 1902 and 1907 by William Vaudrey, engineer of the South Staffordshire Waterworks Company, located in Rugeley on Wolseley Road.

The building is constructed of brick with terracotta dressings and a slate roof. It has a T-shaped plan comprising a principal east-west range forming the engine house with a lower projecting rear boiler house.

The exterior is designed in Tudorbethan Revival style and rises to two storeys with an attic and basement. The nearly symmetrical front contains seven bays, with the entrance bay positioned slightly left of centre and set forward. A continuous drip mould, plinth and brick corbel table runs across the façade, interrupted only at the entrance. Small finial gables project from the end, central and entrance bays, each with a coped parapet. The principal Tudor arched doorway features a stopped label mould raised above a dated panel and has two leaf doors. The chamfered mullion windows contain plate glass casements; those on the ground floor have four lights with transoms. At first floor level, the gabled bays contain four light windows with diamond panels between them, each topped with hood moulds. The entrance bay has a long two light double transomed window with a four light window to its gable, while the other gables contain single slit windows. Each side reveal has a central buttress flanked by two light transomed windows and five light attic windows above. This architectural treatment continues to the rear, where the central projecting top-lit boiler house features Tudor-arched doorways, drip mould and mullioned and transomed windows.

The interior contains a large open engine house housing a 1907 Hathorn Davy horizontal duplex steam engine with bell cranks and tail rods working pumps extending the full length of the building. Brick pilasters on each side support the gantry crane. In the basement at the front of the engine house is a circa 1914 iron removal plant comprising six mechanical sand filters. The boiler house to the rear, although having lost its boilers, remains intact with the same architectural treatment as the engine house.

The South Staffordshire Waterworks Company was founded in 1853, and all its pumping stations were designed in-house. Brindley Bank fits within a recognisable sequence with other SSWC pumping stations at Maple Brook and Pipe Hill, both near Lichfield. The building was designed to accommodate two engines, though only one was installed. The pumping station's proximity to a branch of the Trent and Mersey Canal facilitated access to coal supplies. In the early 20th century, sand filters for iron removal were installed in the basement beneath the vacant space intended for the second engine. The station was converted to electric pumps in 1969, at which point the boiler plant and chimney were removed. It remains in operation today.