Bressingham Steam and Gardens

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70013, Oliver Cromwell, at Bressingham
A Robert Stephenson and Hawthorns crane tank at Bressingham

Bressingham Steam & Gardens is an odd combination: a steam museum, garden and garden centre. It is found at Bressingham, west of Diss in Norfolk. The site has several narrow gauge rail lines and a number of types of steam engines and vehicles in its collection and is also the home of the national Dad's Army exhibition.[1]

The Gardens

The gardens were established by Alan Bloom MBE at Bressingham Hall. He moved to Bressingham in 1946, after selling his previous 36-acre site at Oakington in Cambridgeshire to raise the capital for the 220 acres in Norfolk, where he hoped to be both a farmer and a nurseryman.[2] He was a plant expert of international renown, particularly in the field of hardy perennials. He laid out the Dell garden with its well-known island beds. His son, Adrian Bloom, laid out the Foggy Bottom garden.

Much of the site is given over to commercial horticulture. There is a garden centre on the site, trading as Blooms of Bressingham, although the nurseries themselves are not open to the public. Bressingham Gardens and Steam Museum is an independent charitable trust. Alan Bloom had wanted to create his own trust in 1967, to ensure that the collection would not be disbursed to pay for death duties, but the laws of the time made this difficult, and after five years of negotiation, the museum was nearly handed over to the Transport Trust. However, the legislation governing private museums was relaxed just before the handover in 1971, and Bloom was able to create his own Trust and thus retain control of it because the collection was of historical and educational importance.[2]

The Narrow Gauge Lines

There are three railway lines which take visitors around the gardens:

  • The Garden Railway - 10.25" gauge miniature railway
  • The Nursery Railway – 2 ft narrow gauge railway
  • The Waveney Valley Railway – 15" gauge miniature railway

The site also contains a short standard gauge section of track and standard gauge footplate rides are sometimes available to visitors.

In 2013, a circular track of dual 7.25" gauge and 5" gauge was built too, providing a total of six different gauges at Bressingham.

Standard gauge steam locomotives

  • NSB Class 21c 2-6-0 No. 377 King Haakon VII. Built in 1919. In working order, restored in 2006.
  • LB&SCR A1 Class 0-6-0T No. 32662 Martello. Built in 1875. On static display.
  • GNR Class C1 (small boiler) 4-4-2 No. 990 Henry Oakley Built in 1898. On static display, on loan from the National Railway Museum.
  • GER Class T26 2-4-0 No. 490. Built in 1894 On static display, on loan from the National Railway Museum.
  • LT&SR 79 Class 4-4-2T No. 80 Thundersley Built in 1909. On static display, on loan from the National Railway Museum.
  • GER Class S56 0-6-0T No. 87. Built in 1904. On static display, on loan from the National Railway Museum.
  • LSWR B4 class 0-4-0T No 102 Granville. Built in 1893. On static display.
  • Beckton Gas Works 0-4-0ST No. 25. Built in 1896. On static display.
  • Baddeley Colliery Beyer-Garratt 0-4-0+0-4-0 No. 6841 William Francis. Built in 1937. On static display. This is the last surviving standard gauge Garratt in Britain.
  • DB/NSR Class 52 2-10-0 No. 5865 Peer Gynt. Built in the 1950s. Found in a caved-in tunnel and restored, now on static display.

Steam vehicles

A variety of steam vehicle are in the collection.[3]

Steam Engines Portable and others

  • Burrell No. 2363 of 1901 Portable.
  • Youngs Portable of 1910 manufactured locally in Diss
  • Tidman Centre Engine (fairground) No. 1891
  • Merryweather Fire engine no. 3702
  • Merryweather Fire pump of 1914

Steam Rollers

  • Burrell No. 3962 Boxer of 1923 reg no. PW 1714
  • Burrell No. 3993 Buster of 1924 reg no. CF 5646
  • Robey 4 ton Tandem Steam Roller No. 42520 Barkis built in 1925 reg No. FE 7632.

Steam Tractors / Traction

  • Garrett 5 ton Steam Tractor No. 34641 Bunty, built in 1924 reg no. CF 5913.
  • Burrell Traction engine No. 3112 Bertha of 1909 reg no. CF 3440
  • Foster Traction engine No. 2821 Beryl of 1903 reg. no. BE 7448
  • Fowler Traction engine No. 6188 Beulah of 1890 reg no. MA 8528

Outside links

 ("Wikimedia Commons" has material
about Bressingham Steam and Gardens)

References

  1. ↑ Dads Army exhibition Retrieved 7 May 2009
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Steam Engines at Bressingham, (1976), Alan Bloom, Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-10867-9
  3. ↑ Old Glory Magazine No.229 Feb 2009 page 48 (Museum collections listing)
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