Enjoy!!!

Enjoy!!!

Monday, May 27, 2019

Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum

Continuing my visits to Victorian sewage pumping stations in the London area, I made a visit to the last one I know about, Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum. However it is just a museum.

It is located near Walthamstow, NE London. It is relatively close to Markfield Beam Engine, separated by modern day filter beds.


The museum is located at the Low Hall Pumping Station, a Grade II listed building that was originally a sewage pumping station built in 1885. The area was originally occupied by the Low Hall Farm and in the 1880s the council acquired the land in order to build a sewage pumping station. The pumphouse was built in 1885 and steam pumps were installed in a pit at the front of the building to raise the effluent coming from the Blackhorse Road area. Two boilers provided the steam for these.

The engines didn't run together. When one was stopped for maintenance, the other would be in use.  From 1928 the pumps fed effluent directly into the main sewerage system run by the London County Council. However, by the early 1970s it seems the production of steam by the boilers wasn't too safe and electric pumps were installed.

Some of the 1885 buildings were demolished. The original pumps were removed but the steam engines were left in situ, presumably being too difficult to dismantle and scrap.

Today the museum is more of a transport museum than a pumping station. However you can still see the horizontal steam engines. They are Grade II listed along with the steel beams that form part of the building’s roof. One of the engines is run on compressed air on the last Sunday of every month, when I paid a visit.



The rest of the museum is devoted more to the pioneering achievements in road, rail, air and sea transport in Waltham Forest and the surrounding area from the early 19th century.

A steam engine

Other displays are Routemaster buses, a decommissioned London Underground 1967 Stock Victoria line carriage, and various fire fighting vehicles.






See Wikipedia entry

See History of the Pumphouse & Low Hall Manor

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