Crofton Pumping Station

GREAT BEDWYN CROFTON SU 26 SE 5/93 Crofton Pumping Station 5.1985 GV I Pumping Station for the Kennet and Avon Canal Co. 1802-9, John Rennie, chief engineer, enlarged 1843 and restored 1971. Group of buildings comprising engine house, boiler house, side boiler house and various attached structures. Pumphouse of brickwork, English bond, with hipped large slate roof. Four-storey 4 window bays. Entrance off centre on north gable, round headed, with access across header leat. Lower boiler house attached by gable to south, brick with slate roof and large fanlight. Engine house with 12- pane sashes, 6-pane to top floor. Boiler house with gable window. Further boiler house to side of 1843. Interior: Engine house has 2 pumping engines, No 1, of 1812 by Boulton and Watt with condenser and parallel motion. Six-ton 9 m cast iron beam. Valves modified 1843 and condenser relocated. No 2 engine by Harvey & Co of Hayle, 1843, cylinder replaced 1903. Both engines 1.066 m cylinder bore, 2.44 m stroke raising 1 ton of water each stroke, 12 and 9 strokes per minute respectively. Water is raised 12.19 m from a tunnel from the reservoir and canal pound supplemented from canal lock No 63 after 1847. Water is laundered into header leat (now derelict) leading to summit of canal 1500 m to the west, above lock 62. Boilers of Lancashire type replacing originals in 1896. 8.2 m x 2.28 m diameter. A subsidiary pump was installed 1826 to supply water to Tottenham House (q.v.). The engines are the earliest steam beam engines still in working order. The pumping station is the key element in an important group of industrial and utilitarian monuments in Crofton, which also includes the reservoir outfall (q.v.) locks (q.v.), the Great Western Railway and a 1939-45 pillbox.

Listing NGR: SU2614662269