Firepool Pumping Station

The folloing building shall be added to the list:-

TAUNTON FIREPOOL ST 23 25 Canal Road 6/10000 Firepool Pumping Station - II Two limekilns of the early 1840s; surmounted by hot air engine house built c1866 and water tank of 1877 and subsequently remodelled in 1889 as a pumping station for Bristol and Exeter Railway. Limekilns built of limestone rubble with buttresses and keyed brick arches to 2 chambers; rest of English bond red brick with blue brick string and impost courses; hipped slate roofs with brick lateral stacks to flanking ranges; segmental corrugated iron roof to wrought-iron water tank. Main block with water tank, built on limekilns, is of 2 storeys with segmental-arched windows to 4-window range articulated by recessed segmental-arched bays with flanking pilasters. Other elevations are articulated in similar fashion. To left of front is a lower 3-storey one-bay block with seqmental-arched windows and lean-to roof over cartbay to left. To right, and with its roof at same height and balancing that to left, is a similar one-storey bay built on top of limekiln continued from underneath main block and having entrance to rear. Interior not inspected but noted as including two sets of Pearn three throw engines dating from the building's use as a pumping station, which continued until 1960s. The lime kilns were built at the point where the Bridgewater and Taunton Canal (1827) and the Grand Union Canal (1838) met the river Tone, and were erected on a coal and culm wharf established following the arrival of the Bristol and Exeter Railway in 1842. More water was needed to service the station at Taunton, aid the brick for the 1860s building was supplied by William Thomas of Poole, West Buckland.

Listing NGR: ST2311825357