Ryhope Engines Museum
| Ryhope Engines Museum | |
|
County Durham | |
|---|---|
 Ryhope Pumping Station | |
| Type: | Pumping station |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | NZ40395247 |
| Location: | 54°51’55"N, 1°22’20"W |
| Town: | Ryhope |
| History | |
| Pumping station | |
| Neo-Jacobean | |
| Information | |
| Owned by: | Northumbrian Water |
| Website: | ryhopeengines.org.uk |
The Ryhope Engines Museum is a Victorian pumping station which has been converted into a museum and visitor attraction in, Ryhope, a suburb of Sunderland in County Durham.
The station is a Grade II* listed building. It was operational for 100 years before closing in 1967. The building is more or less Jacobean in style with curving Dutch gables, and a tapering octagonal brick chimney. The historian of British industrial architecture Hubert Pragnell calls it a "cathedral of pistons and brass set within a fine shell of Victorian brickwork with no expense spared".[1]
Today it is a volunteer-run museum. It contains two Victorian beam engines, which are kept in working order by members of the Ryhope Engines Trust. The site is owned by Northumbrian Water, successors to the Sunderland & South Shields Water Company which built the complex in the 1860s.
The engines are a near identical pair of double-acting compound rotative beam engines by the local firm R & W Hawthorn of Newcastle upon Tyne - 'possibly the finest pair of compound beam engines in Great Britain'.[2] Each beam weighs 22 tons and each flywheel 18 tons. Both engines can be seen fully operational and in steam on various weekends and bank holidays each year.
The museum also contains three 1908 Lancashire boilers (two of which are still in regular service), a blacksmith's forge, a waterwheel, numerous steam engines and pumps, a replica plumber's shop, and many items associated with waterworks. In addition, visitors arriving in the engine house are now able to see to the bottom of the 250-foot well shaft by means of a viewing panel inserted in the floor.
See also
- Tees Cottage Pumping Station for another working example of preserved waterworks engines in County Durham.
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Ryhope Engines Museum) |
References
- ↑ Pragnell, Hubert J. (2021). Industrial Britain: an Architectural History. Batsford. pp. 144–145. ISBN 978-1-84994-733-6. OCLC 1259509747.
- ↑ S.M.Linsley, 'Ryhope Pumping Station - history & description'. Sunderland, 1973 & 1997.