The Leawood Pump

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Leawood Pump, Cromford Canal, Derbyshire

There are two reasons why the Cromford Canal terminates at Cromford:  Sir Richard Arkwright was prepared to invest in the waterway in order to secure cheap, easy transportation for his cotton mills, and he had built his water-powered factories at Cromford to take advantage of two reliable sources of water – the Bonsall Brook and the Cromford Moor Sough, a lead-mine adit draining the ore-field below Wirksworth.  Its water emerged at a constant year-round temperature of 52°F so that the upper section of the canal hardly ever froze in winter. 

Sir Richard Arkwright would have preferred the canal to take water from the River Derwent above Masson Mill, presumably to protect the supply to his mills at Cromford.  Instead, after the sough-water had powered the mills it entered the canal through a culvert at Cromford Wharf, later supplemented by an open channel to a second basin.

Soon after the opening of the Cromford Canal, reservoirs were constructed at the watershed between the Amber and Erewash Valleys, at Butterley, Butterley Park (drained in the late 1930s) and Codnor Park, to supply the Nottingham Canal by way of the flight of locks from Codnor Park to Langley Bridge.

The lead miners ultimately needed to extract ore from below the level of the Cromford Moor Sough and in 1772 began to dig the Meerbrook Sough, a lead-mine adit which drains into the River Derwent just north of Whatstandwell.

When the Meerbrook Sough opened circa 1836 it deprived the Cromford Canal of the dependable supply of thermal water from the older Cromford Moor Sough, and obliged the Canal Company to construct the Leawood Pump. 

Designed by Graham & Co of Elsecar, South Yorkshire and completed in 1849, the pump is a Cornish-type engine located beside the aqueduct over the River Derwent, lifting water thirty feet from the river during the weekend hours when the water-mills downstream were closed. 

The stone chimney, 95 feet high, has a cast-iron crown with a Venturi device to improve the draught. 

The existing locomotive-type boilers were manufactured by the Midland Railway and installed in a specially built extension to the engine house in 1904. 

After years of neglect the engine was restored to working order in 1979.

The pump house is open to visitors from Easter to October:  https://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/leisure/countryside/countryside-sites/wildlife-amenity/leawood-pumphouse.aspx.

A short walk through the history of canal engineering

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Wigwell Aqueduct, Cromford Canal, Derbyshire
Leawood Aqueduct, Cromford Canal, Derbyshire (2010)

Two silver threads run down the Derbyshire Derwent Valley between Matlock and Derby, the River Derwent and the Cromford Canal.

The valley bristles with monuments of industrial history, and the stretch of canal south from its terminus in Cromford is particularly rich in structures that typify and explain the archaeology of Britain’s inland waterways.

One of the most impressive – though difficult to see and photograph except in winter – is the Wigwell Aqueduct, designed by William Jessop to cross the River Derwent on a wide arch that carries the date 1793.

In its progress up the Amber and Derwent valleys the canal crossed both rivers by masonry-arch aqueducts – low arches in a long embankment over the Amber at Bull Bridge, now demolished, and a much higher, elegant single span across the Derwent at Lea Wood.  Both of these structures failed during construction and each had to be partly rebuilt at Jessop’s voluntary expense:  his famous comment on the injudicious economy of using Crich lime in the masonry of the Leawood aqueduct was,–

…Painful as it is to me to lose the good opinion of my Friends I would rather receive their censure for the faults of my head than of my heart.

The Wigwell Aqueduct (sometimes called the Leawood Aqueduct) has since stood the test of time, and it’s an outstanding example of the masonry-arch construction that James Brindley had pioneered at the Barton Aqueduct (1761) taking his Bridgewater Canal across the River Irwell west of Manchester.

A short walk further south along the canal stands an example of the successor to the masonry arch – the iron-trough aqueduct that Thomas Telford developed to span the wide Dee Valley at Pontcysyllte, east of Llangollen in North Wales. 

Telford showed that it was possible to carry a waterway in an iron trough at far greater height than was possible with masonry.  On the Cromford Canal, the iron-trough technique proved useful in other ways.

Twice in a decade, railway engineers needed to burrow a way under the canal for double-track railways.  In the late 1830s the North Midland Railway at Bull Bridge pierced the canal embankment to take its main line north towards Rotherham, and within ten years the Manchester, Buxton, Matlock & Midland Junction Railway needed to tunnel through Lea Wood, where the canal main line and a private branch to Lea Mills had hugged the hillside.

In each case, iron troughs in segments were fabricated at Butterley Works near Ripley and floated down the canal.  Dropping them into place and making the join watertight was accomplished in a matter of hours over Saturday night, when canal traffic could be paused, and then the embankment below was excavated and railway track laid.

The iron-trough rail arch and the original gothic road-arch at Bull Bridge were demolished in 1968.  Of the two aqueducts at Lea Wood, the one over the main line survives, and stopping trains to Matlock pass by.  The corresponding aqueduct on the Leawood branch was demolished sometime soon after the Second World War and has been replaced by a footbridge. 

Anyone seeking to understand the difference between the two types of aqueduct found on British canals need only park at the High Peak Junction car park and walk down the canal.

A short distance beyond the Leawood Aqueduct is a bijou example of the other major civil-engineering achievement of the Canal Age, the 42-yard Gregory Tunnel.

The towpath continues south as far as Ambergate, where the line of the canal was lost to a natural gas processing plant in the 1960s.

The hourly Derby-Matlock train service provides opportunities to explore the canal from Cromford, (rather than High Peak Junction), returning from Whatstandwell or Ambergate stations.

Highfield Cocoa and Coffee House

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Former Highfield Cocoa & Coffee House, London Road, Sheffield

Some significant historic buildings hide in plain sight, unnoticed and at risk of disappearing without much warning.

It’s a recurring theme in my Demolished Sheffield book that a great many attractive and noteworthy structures are off the radar of listing and conservation planning policies, and need the vigilance of local people to ensure they survive.

I’m grateful, therefore, to Robin Hughes for alerting me to the former Highfield Cocoa and Coffee House on London Road, which is subject to a planning application for its demolition and replacement by an incongruous five-storey structure that intrudes on the surrounding streetscape.

I must have driven past the building thousands of times without even noticing it.  It’s attractive, dignified but reticent, and its historical significance is invisible.

It was built in 1877 to the designs of one of Sheffield’s foremost architectural practices, M E Hadfield & Son, for one of its most generous philanthropists, Frederick Thorpe Mappin (1821-1910), to provide workmen with a safe, comfortable environment to eat, drink and relax before and after their work.

The cocoa houses were in essence pubs with no alcohol, based on the upper-class gentlemen’s clubs that had grown from the coffee houses of the eighteenth century.

The Highfield Cocoa and Coffee House provided food starting with hot breakfasts from 5.00am, non-intoxicating drinks including a pint mug of coffee for one old penny, “the best tobacco and cigars…at the cheapest rate”, and offered billiards, draughts, dominoes, chess and skittles.  Alcohol and gambling were alike strictly prohibited.

The ground floor was occupied by a coffee room, a reading room, a bar and a kitchen.  Above, accessible by a “spacious staircase”, was a second reading room “well supplied with papers”, linking by folding doors to the billiard room with three tables.

The Highfield Cocoa House was the first such establishment in Sheffield when it opened on Monday April 9th 1877 in the presence of almost all the major leaders of Sheffield’s public life, including both Sheffield MPs, John Arthur Roebuck (1802-1879) and A J Mundella (1825-1897), and the MP for Scarborough, Sir Harcourt Johnstone (1829-1916), the Mayor of Sheffield, George Bassett (1818-1886), the Master Cutler, Edward Tozer (c1820-1890), and a whole posse of aldermen, clergy and other gentlemen. 

Mr Roebuck in his speech remarked that “you will not put down intemperance by being intemperate in trying to force upon the people teetotalism”. 

Frederick Thorpe Mappin, before he declared the building open, explained how he and the vicar of St Mary’s Parish Church, Bramall Lane, Rev C E Lamb, had investigated the flourishing cocoa-house movement in Liverpool, Oldham and London to determine the most appropriate model for their scheme.

Within two years the Sheffield Cocoa and Coffee House Company had opened six more cocoa houses with a seventh under construction.

The initial popularity of the Highfield house waned, and it closed on Saturday June 27th 1908.  An illustrated cutting, apparently from the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, remarked,–

“At the outset the place was a very popular centre – cafés in those days were in the nature of a rarity – but for a long time past the place has worn a somewhat melancholy appearance…“

The building was taken over by a confectioner and a shopfitter and remained in use until at least 2008.  The Tramway pub next door was demolished in 2015.

The Hallamshire Historic Buildings’ detailed, informative comment on the 2022-23 planning application to demolish the Cocoa House is here. Nick Roscoe’s illustrated article is here.

Update, April 4th 2023: Vigilant steps by conservation-minded councillors have secured a six-month reprieve for the coffee house: Mappin Coffee House Sheffield: Historic building ‘saved’ from demolition for six months after notice served | The Star. This will safeguard the building – barring accidents – while alternatives to demolition are debated.

However, accidents can happen: Bringing the house down | Mike Higginbottom Interesting Times.

Collegiate School

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Former Collegiate School, Shaw Street, Everton, Liverpool

Liverpool’s St George’s Hall is prominent in a city rich in nineteenth- and twentieth-century architecture, and the remarkable story of its young architect, Harvey Lonsdale Elmes (1814-1847), winning two separate architectural competitions to design it, is well-known.  In his short life he designed few buildings, none of which he saw completed.

The only other surviving design by Elmes is the façade of Liverpool Collegiate School on Shaw Street, Everton.  Its Perpendicular Gothic style, in contrast with the neoclassical St George’s Hall, indicates that the school was an Anglican foundation.

The building behind is not Elmes’ because of an unseemly dispute with the managing committee who deprived him of the commission in order to employ a cheaper local contractor. 

(He had similar trouble over St George’s Hall, when the Corporation commissioned Joseph Franklin, the City Surveyor, to start the project, but Franklin, to his great credit, stood aside in deference to Elmes.)

The foundation stone of the Collegiate School was laid by Lord Stanley (later the 14th Earl of Derby) in October 1840, and the building was opened by W E Gladstone and the Bishop of Chester in 1843. 

One of the first Victorian public schools, its original collegiate organisation provided three separate curricula, an upper school offering a classical syllabus for boys aspiring to the “gentlemanly professions” at twenty guineas a term (who were allowed to use the grand Shaw Street entrance), and two further programmes, the middle school at ten guineas and the lower school at three, preparing pupils for business and commercial occupations (and who used the side entrances).

Its original facilities included an art gallery, museum, evening institute and a shooting range. 

The octagonal lecture hall was at first the largest covered meeting-place in Liverpool, with a reported capacity of 3,000, and was used for concerts by Jenny Lind and the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra before the completion of the Philharmonic Hall in 1849.

The Upper School moved to new premises at Lodge Lane, Sefton Park, in 1884, and the Middle and Lower (or Commercial) schools amalgamated when they were taken over by Liverpool Corporation in 1907.

The Shaw Street school’s alumni included the comedian Ted Ray (1905-1977), the actor Leonard Rossiter (1926-1984) and Holly Johnson (b1960), the lead singer of Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

The school was reorganised as a comprehensive school for nine hundred boys in 1973, and after closure in 1983 became vandalised and was partly burnt down. 

It was refurbished by the architectural practice Shed KM for the developer Urban Splash, and reopened as an apartment block in 2000.

The Shaw Street façade is a fortunate survivor, reminding us that Harvey Lonsdale Elmes was adept at a wide range of styles.  His only other surviving work is his Italianate extension to Thingwall Hall, Knotty Ash, c1846-47. 

Other buildings by Elmes have been lost – Druids Cross House, Woolton (1847;  demolished 1978;  Grade-II listed lodge survives), Allerton Tower, Allerton (1849;  demolished 1937) and the West Derby County Asylum, Rainhill (1847-51;  demolished 1992).

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lectures on Liverpool architecture, please click here.

Old buffers

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Mansion House Station, London Underground: hydraulic buffer stop

At the end of a platform at Mansion House Underground Station stands a strange-looking urn.

The track has been lifted from Platform 2 because all trains through the station use Platforms 1 and 3.

The buffer stop that protected the terminal track for trains reversing westward remains, however, and the “urn” indicates that it’s a fine example of a hydraulic design by the Ipswich manufacturer Ransomes & Rapier.

The vessel attached to the buffer contains water or hydraulic fluid under pressure, and is designed to resist the sudden force of a vehicle which has failed to stop.

It doesn’t need to be an ornate shape, but elegance is a hallmark of Victorian engineering.

This item of paraphernalia, ignored by the vast proportion of Underground travellers, is a piece of deep arcana that has attracted the attention of rail enthusiasts who specialise in infrastructure and it’s clear that there are or were numerous examples throughout the London Underground system and further afield.

There’s a particularly fine example at Putney Bridge Underground Station – https://www.flickr.com/photos/mars1940/9789182564 – and halfway across the world two others at Kalka Station in India, the interchange point between the main line from Delhi and the celebrated Kalka-Shimla railway:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/14892851@N06/6845505378.

The Wikimedia-Commons page ‘Ransome & Rapier hydraulic buffers’ illustrates examples from many parts of the world, most of all South America – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ransomes_%26_Rapier_hydraulic_buffers – but none are as pretty as the one I found on the London Underground at Mansion House.

Two preserved railways in the UK have examples of Ransome & Rapier buffers – the Great Central Railway (Loughborough) at Leicester North and the Somerset & Dorset Railway Heritage Trust at Midsomer Norton.  

In Districtdavesforum there’s discussion about whether TfL could be persuaded to donate an example to the excellent but already crowded Ipswich Transport Museum, which is an admirable thought.

Fenchurch Street Station

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Fenchurch Street Station, City of London

Fenchurch Street Station is an anomaly among London rail termini, tucked away down a back street from Fenchurch Street itself , serving only local lines as far out as Southend and Shoeburyness, and lacking any direct link to the Underground.

Its charming façade, designed by George Berkeley (1853-54), looks out on to a modest urban square and the entrance leads by lifts and escalators to four platforms at the level of the viaduct that carries the tracks.

It has a number of historic claims:  it stands on a site rich in archaeology of the Roman period;  when it opened in 1841 it boasted the first railway station bookstall, pioneered by William Marshall who supplied newspapers wholesale to the Great Western Railway;  it’s associated with the first on-train railway murder in July 1864, when Mr Thomas Briggs, aged 70, was robbed and killed on a train from Fenchurch Street to Hackney by Franz Muller, who fled to New York where he was arrested and returned to Britain, found guilty and suffered one of the last public hangings outside Newgate Prison in November 1864.

Fenchurch Street was the first railway terminus to reach within the City of London boundary, followed by Cannon Street (1863-6) serving the area south of the Thames, and Liverpool Street (1874) which became the major terminus for train services to East Anglia and beyond.

Originally built for the 3½-mile-long London & Blackwall Railway, much of which, as far as the West India Docks, was built on a brick viaduct, this isolated line was built to the unusual gauge of 5ft 0½in and neither of its termini admitted steam locomotives:  cable-hauled trains ran in by their own momentum and out again aided by a shove from the station staff.

This couldn’t last.  When other railways brought their services to Fenchurch Street the intensity of traffic necessitated steam locomotives, and the London & Blackwall was converted to the standard 4ft 8½in gauge in 1849.

After successive amalgamations the lines out of Fenchurch Street were operated by two companies, the Great Eastern Railway and the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway, which was taken over by the Midland Railway in 1912.

It’s always been a busy station, though the lines it served provided uncomfortable services because of overcrowding.  Electric trains took over from steam in 1961, but the increasing weight of traffic made the old LT&SR route notorious as the “misery line”.

A major refurbishment, which entirely closed the station for seven weeks in 1994, replaced track, signals and power supply, and a further upgrade took place in 2013.

1970s plans to bring the proposed Fleet Line through Fenchurch Street came to nothing, and the scheme later opened as the Jubilee Line, eventually reaching Stratford in 1999.

Tower Hill Underground Station is a matter of minutes away, as is the Docklands Light Railway Tower Hill Station.

Discussions have taken place to expand Fenchurch Street to six platforms by taking over the site of the DLR Tower Gateway station, running DLR services into an expanded Tower Hill Underground station.

Fenchurch Street was handling around 16 million passengers a day before the pandemic, slightly less than Cannon Street.  It remains to be seen how many of those passengers return in the next few years.

Mary Ann Rawson’s legacy

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Upper Wincobank Chapel and Old School House, Sheffield

Photo: © Penny Rae

Mary Ann Rawson (1801-1887) was a celebrated campaigner for the anti-slavery movement, who corresponded with such luminaries as Frederick Douglass, Lord Shaftesbury and William Wilberforce and promoted social reforms of all kinds throughout her long life.

The daughter of a prosperous Sheffield refiner of precious metals and the widow of a Nottingham businessman who died young, she was in an extraordinary position, as a woman in early nineteenth-century England, to work to benefit humanity.

She bought back the family home, Wincobank Hall, which had been sold to cover her father’s business difficulties, and lived there with her sister Emily to the end of her life.

Her philanthropy ranged widely and her views were lifelong and determined.  James Montgomery, who had been editor of Sheffield’s radical newspaper, the Sheffield Iris, considered she held “such extreme notions – such extreme views” about total abstinence and the abolition of the death penalty.  She was one of the first, in 1839, to sign the teetotal Pledge.

Though she campaigned nationally and internationally, she also did good on her own doorstep, in particular by selling her silverware to found a school for local children in 1841, and she afterwards financed a school house that “would attract a good School Master”.  In 1880 she established a Charitable Trust to ensure that the building would continue to benefit the community beyond her lifetime.  Her Trust Deed specified that it could be used as a place of worship but must remain undenominational and totally in the control of the congregation.

When the school was superseded by a board school in 1905 the congregation extended it as a chapel, and Mary Ann Rawson’s legacy remains active in making Wincobank a better place.  The Grade II-listed Upper Wincobank Undenominational Chapel has services each Sunday and hosts social activities during the week:  What’s going on at Upper Wincobank Chapel – Upper Wincobank Undenominational Chapel.

The Chapel trustees, together with members of the Friends of Zion Graveyard, the Friends of Wincobank Hill and local residents are refurbishing the Old School House to provide a community hub and heritage centre, thanks to support from the Veolia Environmental Trust, Sheffield City Council, Sheffield Town Trust, the J G Graves Charitable Trust, the Clothmakers Foundation and South Yorkshire Community Foundation.

Rising costs and increasingly urgent needs, including a warm hub this winter, mean that the working group needs additional funds to complete the scheme. 

If you’d like to contribute, please go to https://www.justgiving.com/cmar-wincobank.

The Friends of Zion Graveyard Annual General Meeting takes place at the Upper Wincobank Chapel, Wincobank Avenue, Sheffield, S5 6BB on Monday December 12th 2022 at 7.00pm.  It’s open to anyone who has connections with the Wincobank community or is interested in the Chapel, the Graveyard.

Benevolent despots

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Darley Abbey, Derbyshire

Of the late-eighteenth century company settlements that distinguish the Derbyshire Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site, Cromford, Belper and Milford are well-known, but visitors tend to pass by Darley Abbey.

Thomas Evans, who had lead-mining interests in Bonsall and iron-slitting mills at The Holmes in Derby, founded a bank in Derby in 1771, the same year that Richard Arkwright, Jedediah Strutt and Samuel Need began their cotton-spinning enterprise at Cromford. 

Arkwright banked with Evans, and in 1783 they began a partnership using Arkwright’s patent to run the Boar’s Head Mill – named after the Evans family crest – at Darley Abbey, where there had been a paper mill in 1700. 

Before his death in 1814 Thomas Evans had bought out all the partners who were not members of his immediate family.

The Boar’s Head Mill stood on the east bank of the Derwent, drawing its head of water from a magnificent six-foot-high weir stretching 360 feet across the river.  The original mill was burnt literally to the ground in 1788, but its replacement was back in production within a year. 

Apart from an abundant head of water, the site was near enough to Derby to provide connection with the Derby Canal and a supply of available labour, just as Cromford drew on the workers of the declining lead industry and Belper had an existing community of nailers and knitters. 

However, like Arkwright and Strutt, Evans saw the need to provide housing and community facilities to promote a stable workforce. 

On the opposite bank to the mills, connected by a bridge, grew a community of three-storey cottages,– Brick Row, Flat Square, Lavender Row, Mile Ash Lane, North Row and West Row,– until by 1830 over five hundred employees worked at the mills, the majority of them living in nearly two hundred cottages in the factory village.

The Evans family had a high reputation as enlightened employers and landlords.  Sir Richard Phillips (1767-1840) praised their “unwearied philanthropy” and remarked that their “kindness and rewards are constantly bestowed in promoting cleanliness and neatness, and in stimulating industry and good conduct”.

Of course, Evans’ mill and its adjuncts provided almost the only available employment in the village, and the housing belonged to the company, so workers’ discipline was firm.

Like the Arkwrights and the Strutts, the Evans family provided a full range of community facilities at Darley Abbey, largely financed by the disciplinary fines – a playing field, the parish church of St Matthew (1819) and the village school, hot dinners for the aged and infirm, medical treatment, convalescent opportunities, and when all else failed, burial and a free gravestone.

Brian Cooper in his book Transformation of a Valley:  the Derbyshire Derwent (1983;  Scarthin Books 1991) tells of the lock-up at the entrance to the village, where “a watchman was stationed…every night, whose task…was to arrest and imprison any boisterous revellers and enter in a book the names of all women returning from Derby later than ten o’clock.  According to legend, the girls were more successful at evasion than the men.  On seeing the watchman, they pulled their skirts high above their faces and ran for the village…”

Darley Abbey Mills remained in the hands of the Evans family until 1903, and continued as textile mills until 1970.

Since then diverse uses have kept the buildings intact and recognisable.

The mills and the village are connected by a bridge across the river, and are easily accessible from the A61/A6 intersection at Allestree, north of Derby city centre.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2016 The Derbyshire Derwent Valley tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Mi Amigo

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Mi Amigo memorial, Endcliffe Park, Sheffield

I’ve been aware for a long time that there was a memorial to the ten airmen who died when their USAAF B-17G Flying Fortress crashed in Sheffield’s western suburbs in 1944, but I mistakenly thought it was located somewhere in the depths of Ecclesall Woods.

Returning from a bombing mission over Denmark, the plane Mi Amigo was crippled by enemy gunfire and inexorably losing height as it limped towards the city.

David Harvey has extensively researched the story of Mi Amigo and its crew, which he wrote up and published in Mi Amigo’:  the story of Sheffield’s Flying Fortress (ALD Design & Print 1997).

Eye-witness accounts agree that the plane approached Endcliffe Park from the south-east, over Gleadless and Heeley, and circled looking for a place to land.  Eventually an engine died and the plane spun three times and plunged to the earth among the trees.

In 1969, when ten scarlet oak trees were planted to replace those that were destroyed or had to be felled after the wreckage was cleared, two memorial plaques were fixed to a large boulder, listing the ten airmen and dedicated to their memory:

Erected by

Sheffield RAF Association

in memory of

the ten crew of USAAF bomber

which crashed in this park

22-2-1944

Per Ardua Ad Astra

Lt John Kriegshauser (pilot, from Missouri)

Lt Lyle Curtis (co-pilot, from Idaho)

Lt John Whicker Humphrey (navigator, from Illinois)

Lt Melchor Hernandez (bomb-aimer, from California)

Sgt Robert Mayfield (radio operator/log-keeper/photographer, from Illinois)

Sgt Harry Estabrooks (flight engineer/top-turret gunner, from Kansas)

Sgt Charles Tuttle (lower turret gunner, from Kentucky)

Sgt Maurice Robbins (rear-gunner, from Texas)

Sgt Vito Ambrosio (waist-gunner and assistant radio operator, from New York)

Sgt George Malcolm Williams (waist-gunner and assistant flight engineer, from Oklahoma)

An annual commemoration, supported by the Hallamshire Branch of the Royal British Legion, takes place on the Sunday nearest to the anniversary.

A group of schoolboys who saw the plane come down never forgot it, and one of them, Tony Faulds, aided by the BBC journalist Dan Walker, campaigned for a flypast to mark the 75th anniversary of the incident.

On the morning of February 22nd 2019 ten RAF and USAAF aircraft flew over Endcliffe Park, watched by a crowd of thousands and broadcast live on BBC Breakfast.

Nuanced analyses in response to the 2019 commemoration suggest that the commonly accepted account has been repeatedly embellished:  Did Tony Foulds Lie About Mi Amigo? • The Sheffield Guide.

History is complicated.  Multiple witnesses see a sudden event from different viewpoints.  Seventy-five years is a long time to recollect facts accurately.  Journalists prioritise an eye-catching story over a forensic examination of facts.

What matters, surely, is that the supreme sacrifice of ten airmen is remembered and recognised by those of us who have lived after them.

Update: The eightieth anniversary of the Mi Amigo crash was marked by a further fly-past: Flypast to mark 80th anniversary of Mi Amigo US bomber crash (thestar.co.uk).

Further update: Tony Fauld’s continuing mission to keep faith with the memory of the Mi Amigo crew is detailed in this July 2024 news article: Sheffield war memorial caretaker hails ‘marvellous’ response after tools stolen | Sheffield | The Guardian, which led to an astute report by Victoria Munro (with a range of interesting comments) in the Sheffield Tribune: Who owns the Mi Amigo memorial? – by Victoria Munro (sheffieldtribune.co.uk).

Papplewick underground

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Papplewick Pumping Station, Nottinghamshire: Reservoir

Visitors to the celebrated Papplewick Pumping Station in Nottinghamshire are always impressed by the elaborate engine house and the mighty engines in motion.

They tend not to notice that the site is oddly asymmetrical.

The ornate fountain in the centre of the cooling pond is aligned with the 120-foot-high chimney, but the engine house stands to one side.

This is because the original plan for the layout envisaged a second engine house which proved to be unnecessary because the two Boulton & Watt engines and six boilers could meet the maximum demand, lifting water from the Bunter Sandstone 202 feet below ground.  A second pair of engines would have depleted the source and simply wasted energy.

Pumping water to ground level was not all the engines did, however.

To understand the full power of Papplewick Pumping Station it’s necessary to book a visit to the Papplewick Reservoir, half a mile away. 

The reservoir was built by the engineer Thomas Hawksley in 1880, an impressive vaulted space that could hold 1,500,000 gallons – the amount that the engines could lift from the well each day.

The pumped water was pushed 137 feet higher than the pumping station to a covered brick tank.

When cracks appeared in the brickwork in 1906, probably caused by mining subsidence, the reservoir was emptied and abandoned, and water was sent directly to other reservoirs nearer Nottingham.  A replacement reservoir was eventually built in 1957 and serves the modern electric pumps that replaced steam in 1969.

Visiting the Papplewick Reservoir requires forethought.  It’s open to the public on steaming days, and access is by a bumpy trailer-ride up the unmade road which follows the line of the water main.  To secure a place it’s necessary to arrive soon after opening time:  Papplewick pumping station: Industrial museum and unique wedding venue in Nottinghamshire – Visit us.

Exploring this impressive space and admiring the craftsmanship of the brickwork is a memorable experience.  It has the sort of echo that might enable you to sing the Pearl Fishers’ Duet as a solo.

Outside, looking over the 1957 reservoir to the chimney of the Victorian pumping station in the distance indicates exactly how far the engines pushed the water that they had already lifted from the well. This is Victorian engineering at its most robust and ingenious, and its construction gave health and longer life to the people of Nottingham.