Sudbrook Pump House

This is a large rectangular red brick building with a hipped Welsh slate roof. It is ostensibly of three tall storeys but is actually one volume internally. It is built over an immensly strong basement which supported the weight of the six massive Cornish beam engines it was built to house. The bricks were made locally in the contractor's own brickworks from clay excavated from the Severn Tunnel. The building is 7 x 3 windows, all with arched heads and small paned iron frames. All the windows survive apart from a few small ones which originally lit the basement and are now blocked. The entrance is in the short wall, a central panelled door up a flight of steps, both this and the flanking windows are framed by four orders of brick arches, plain windows above, circular window in the attic. The street elevation has the windows arranged unevenly, 2 + 3 + 2. The first floor window at either end is blind. Tall narrow doorway in the centre for the reception of machinery. The other short wall is almost entirely masked by a large wrought iron water tank supported on a brick plinth. This has a central entrance door and flanking windows and a single window on the returns. This structure was built independently of the main pumphouse but is probably contemporary. Only the circular window on the main house is visible, but it can be seen that the top floor windows have never existed. The rear long wall to the yard is as the street elevation except that the centre three windows are masked by a modern gabled wing which rises to the second storey.

The interior was not seen at resurvey, but it is evident that it remains one space. It was built to house six 70"(178cm) beam engines, the beams of which each weighed 20 tons (20.32 tonnes). There were three bucket pumps at one end and three plunger pumps at the other; only four had to be working at any one time. The immensely strong bob walls which supported these have presumably been removed. The internal space is now largely redundant because of the small size of the electric pumps which still work continuously.