Bull Engine House, Fairplay Pit

The Bull Engine House at Fairplay Pit is a mid to late 19th-century colliery pumping engine house. It features squared rubble walls with rock-faced quoins and is a rectangular building that stands about 20 feet high. One end has a low extension that contains a T-shaped well. The long elevation includes a plinth and a slight offset just over halfway up, with two small square openings to the right of center that are partly brick quoined, and a semi-circular headed opening to the left with brick voussoirs. The extension on the left shows scars of brick walls rising on either side of a large semi-circular headed opening, which has rock-faced voussoirs and is now filled in. The building once housed a 76-inch cylinder bull engine with a 12-foot stroke for pumping water out of the mine. This structure is an impressive example of a colliery building, with very few surviving in the Forest of Dean area.