Gates, Gate-Piers, Curved Wall Section And Railings Associated With Pumping Station

Gates, Gate-Piers, Curved Wall Section and Railings Associated with Pumping Station

These structures run south to north along the former eastern boundary of Streatham Pumping Station, dating to around 1888 when the station was built by the Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company.

The arrangement begins at the southernmost point with a brick pier, followed by a long run of cast iron railings with decorative finials mounted on a stock brick dwarf wall with cast-iron capping. The wall steps up as ground level rises. Outside the former engineer's house, a wide vehicle entrance and pedestrian opening is flanked by cast-iron gates, quadrant walls and gate piers constructed in grey, yellow and red stock brick with concrete caps. The cast-iron spear-head railings continue north, supported on what may be rebuilt brick dwarf walls, to a second larger vehicle entrance with gates, quadrant walls and piers of identical design. A short run of railings extends north from this second entrance but has been truncated, probably during the inter-war period when eight houses were constructed nearby. The gates feature openwork-pattern bottom rails that complement the Moorish style of the pumping station building itself.

The east-west walls marking the former northern and southern boundaries of the pumping station site survive but are not included in this listing: the northern section is detached from the railings and the southern section has been altered at its western end.

The pumping station was built in 1888 to pump water from a well, serving the rapidly expanding suburb of Streatham. The Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company, which operated it, was taken over by the Metropolitan Water Board in 1904. The walls and railings bounding the site and the southernmost gate date from the station's construction and match its style and materials. The northernmost gate is probably later, not appearing on early maps, but follows the same style and forms an integral part of the structure. The railings originally extended much further north to the boundary with 52 Conyers Road but were probably demolished in the inter-war period.

The Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company was incorporated in 1845 from the amalgamation of two earlier water undertakings. Originally drawing water from the Thames at Battersea, the Metropolitan Water Act of 1852 forced them to move their source upstream to Hampton in 1855. The company's Battersea location was notably used by epidemiologist John Snow as a comparator with the Lambeth Waterworks Company in what became known as "the grand experiment". Snow studied cholera deaths during the 1853-4 epidemic, observing that some neighbours unknowingly received cleaner water from Lambeth (whose source had moved to Thames Ditton in 1852) while others consumed more polluted water from the Southwark and Vauxhall company, helping to establish the connection between contaminated water and cholera transmission.