Hundred Foot Pumping Station is a Grade II* listed building in the East Cambridgeshire local planning authority area, England. First listed on 26 February 1985. Pumping station.
Hundred Foot Pumping Station
- WRENN ID
- open-plinth-juniper
- Grade
- II*
- Local Planning Authority
- East Cambridgeshire
- Constituency
- Ely and East Cambridgeshire MP: Charlotte Cane (LD)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 26 February 1985
- Type
- Pumping station
- Address
- Hundred Foot Pumping Station, Downham
- OS grid reference
- TL 507 891
- Coordinates
- 52.47947, 0.21857
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Hundred Foot Pumping Station is a pumping station dating from 1830, designed by Joseph Gwynne for the Littleport and Downham Commissioners. It replaced a windmill and is one of seventy-five such stations in the area. Constructed of gault brick with slate and corrugated asbestos roofs, it comprises a three-storey engine house, a wheelhouse to the right, and a boiler room and workshop (originally a coking shed) to the left. The gabled elevation of the engine house features double sliding doors at ground floor level, and round and flat arched fixed windows with cast iron glazing bars at the first and second floors. Plaques inscribed with verses commemorating the installation of the steam engine are present.
Inside, the 1914 pump remains in use, powered by a Ruston Oil Engine which replaced the original Gwynne engine. A paved second floor and staircase are intact, although the lower galleries have been removed. The boiler house now functions as a diesel oil storage area. The original engine was designed to pump water at two speeds into a tidal river. The larger 50-foot diameter wheel was the largest in the Fens. The station was built on a raft of 600 piles using 300,000 bricks. A new pumping station is planned for the site, which will incorporate the 1926 engine house.
Local climate
Hundred Foot Pumping Station sits in one of the driest parts of the UK, with an average of 690 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 96% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 98% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 33 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 57% of listed buildings. Of these, 16 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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- No EPC on record for this property
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- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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