Blagdon Pumping Station, Blagdon Lane, Blagdon

Image: © Jo and Steve Turner Taken: 9 Mar 2022

Grade II* Listed pumping station. Designed by Charles Hawksley (1839-1917) and built for Bristol Waterworks Company in 1902-05 with four 170hp beam engines manufactured by Glenfield & Kennedy. Unusually, two engines survive intact and are believed to be one of the last of the water pumping beam engines that were installed at waterworks in England (the last was at Eastbury). Construction of the earth dam for the reservoir started in 1898 and when filled reached its top level in 1903. The pumping station was equipped with six Lancashire boilers and two sets of Green’s economisers that fed four Woolf type compound rotative beam engines. Normally four boilers and three beam engines would be in use, consuming 8.5 tons of coal daily, and pumping 7.5 million gallons (34.1m litres) of water a day. In 1949 two of the beam engines were replaced with smaller electric pumps. The tall decorative chimney was truncated in the 1960s. The two receiving tanks, one empty in the picture, each had a capacity of 567,000 gallons (2,577,633 litres). The 1960s replacement pump engine was replaced again by a new model in 2014. At time of writing (2022) the site was closed to the public as Bristol Water plc were carrying out extensive work to the site, including the installation of a new pumping station.

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