The grandest pumping station in Christendom
Last updated 11:08, Friday, 10 October 2008
As early as 1818 the Carlisle Patriot received a letter suggesting a water company for Carlisle.
The writer pointed out the danger in case of fire and the expense “to have water brought from the river in carts and the inconvenience experienced by a great majority of the inhabitants from a want of soft water in their houses”.
The only alternative, said the Carlisle Journal was “water obtained from wells”, but this, in the opinion of the newspaper, “was generally bad”.
But people used it because “the water from the water carts cost purchasers a penny for eight gallons”.
It was the expense of a piped water scheme that had prevented the city from agreeing to a municipal supply.
When George Stephenson took levels in January and June 1843, he came up with a figure of £30,800 for the work. This was just too expensive. A more practical scheme costing £15,000 came from James Simpson, the engineer at Chelsea and Lambeth Waterworks, where in April 1845, the Journal reported on the “most active preparations being made to establish a water company”.
The prospectus issued in June explained that water would be raised from the Eden at Stoney Holme by means of a steam engine, where it would be filtered and conveyed in pipes to a reservoir on Harraby Hill.
A joint stock company would raise the capital and charge a rental for the supply.
Water thus obtained was described “as admirably adapted for drinking, washing and every other domestic purpose.”
With a company established, George Relph, the secretary, advertised in March 1846 for estimates “for the erection of a steam engine with suitable pumping apparatus for supplying the city with water from the River Eden at a point near to the junction of the Petteril with that river”.
In the same newspaper was an application “for the purchase of a sufficient piece of ground to erect a steam engine and make filter beds in Stoney Holme”.
Anoth er advert in October was for those wishing to tender for the necessary excavations for the reservoir on Harraby Hill and laying the pipes.
At the same time the company reported “a powerful pumping engine has been ordered of Messrs Harvey and Co of Hayle Foundry, the makers of the engine at the Canal Basin”. This was a 50hp Cornish engine which could deliver 55,000 gallons of water per minute.
Work continued into 1847 and in February the council were told “the water company had agreed with the Duke of Devonshire to lay pipes almost in a straight line from Union Street to Stoney Holme House and along that line they would form a road for the cartage of coal for their steam engine.”
This they agreed to hedge and fence, first called Waterworks Lane and later St Aidan’s Road.
The contractor for the works at Stoneyholme, Thomas Nelson, said of the pumping engine in April 1847: “The design of the building is very beautiful and will, we have no doubt, prove alike gratifying to the calculations and the good taste of Mr Head, who first proposed it and has undertaken to pay the difference between the cost of a plain and an ornamental building.”
It cost Mr Head nearly £1,000 in 1848 to “defray the expense of ornament” but he thought this money well spent.
Further explanation was given by R Rawlinson in his review Tall Chimney Shafts in 1862, where he said that the waterworks engine house “was a building which a stranger might easily mistake for a castellated mansion”.
This, said Mr Rawlinson, “was the result of the golden influence of a neighbouring landowner who preferred paying for the ornamental part of the building to having the beauty of his landscape, as seen from his grounds [at Rickerby], spoiled by an unsightly shaft.”
Complaints were forthcoming in January 1848. “Not a drop of water has yet passed through the pipes,” said one disgruntled customer, but this was remedied in February when the Journal announced: “The waterworks engine was set to work for the first time.”
What had been a private company was taken over by the city in 1866 and, as Carlisle expanded, increased demand required new filter beds at Stoneyholme in 1886.
The Journal reported in May that for this purpose “100 navvies are employed night and day”.
But there was already contemplation for a new scheme, the necessary act receiving royal assent on August 12, 1898 for “a supply of gravitation from the upper waters of the River Gelt at an estimated cost of about £130,000”.
On August 17 1906 the newspaper reported the switch on of the new supply.
“At 1.15pm the pumping engine in Waterworks Lane ceased working,” stated the Journal, “and at the same time the Harraby Hill reservoir was put out of use by stop valves.”
No longer performing a purpose, it was agreed by the Water Committee on April 6 1908, the engine and boilers at Stoney Holme could be sold by auction.
The dismantled engine sold for almost £400 (it had cost £2,000) to an undisclosed buyer, leaving an empty engine house intact.
It was not until January 1961 that The Cumberland News reported on the demolition of the tower, with photographs of the work in progress.
While nothing remains to be seen at Stoneyholme, parts of the reservoir wall are still in place on Harraby Hill.
