A machine outside the Brunel Museum, Rotherhithe
Introduction
The photograph on this page of A machine outside the Brunel Museum, Rotherhithe by Chris Allen as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
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A machine outside the Brunel Museum, Rotherhithe
Image: © Chris Allen Taken: 28 Apr 1984
I believe position and view direction are about right. This appears to be a pair of Edward's type air pumps and I have discovered from a blog that they were used as priming pumps at a dock impounding pumping station for Surrey Docks - Lavender Dock Pumphouse. From that I deduce they were used to evacuate air from the casing of centrifugal pumps so that they would pump rather than just turn uselessly in air. A 2018 Streetview shows that they were still there.
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
51.501414
Longitude
-0.05296