Pode Hole
| Pode Hole | |
| Lincolnshire | |
|---|---|
 Pode Hole post office | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TF213220 |
| Location: | 52°46’56"N, 0°12’10"W |
| Data | |
| Post town: | Spalding |
| Postcode: | PE11 |
| Dialling code: | 01775 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | South Holland |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
South Holland and The Deepings |
Pode Hole is a small village two miles west of the centre of Spalding in Lincolnshire. The village stands at the confluence of several drainage channels, where two pumping stations discharge water into Vernatt's Drain from land in Deeping Fen to the south and west. Water from Pinchbeck South Fen to the North is also lifted into Vernatt's Drain. The village arose to service the pumping stations.
The village is largely a Ribbon development stretching from the pumping stations and the Fisherman's Arms public house along Bourne Road toward Spalding. The village post office and small shop is now also a bed and breakfast, and an outside catering service.
The name 'Pode Hole' may be a reference to a marshy location, using a local dialect word for frogs an toads.[1]
Pode Hole has one of the earliest rain gauge records of precipitation, beginning in 1726.[2]
Pode Hole falls within the drainage area of the Welland and Deepings Internal Drainage Board,[3] successors to the original Deeping Fen commissioners.
Pumping stations
Pumping stations were installed because the cill at Vernatt's Sluice, where the drain discharges into the Welland above Spalding, was higher than the cill of the precursor sluices at Pode Hole. The fen drains could not naturally discharge into Vernatt's Drain. There was a history of windmill-driven pumps and later small steam engines across the Great Fen but the two engines at Pode Hole were the first of the large scale pumping efforts, and an encouragement to later schemes.
John Rennie the Elder was consulted in 1818, and he proposed diverting the upper reaches of Vernatt's Drain from the Welland to the Witham to improve the fall. It is unclear if this would have worked, but the funds were not available and a later proposal for steam engines at Pode Hole was interrupted by his death. In the end an engineer called Benjamin Bevan appointed by the commissioners placed orders for two beam engines from separate engineers,Fenton and Murray of Leeds, and Butterley of Derby. The first was 60 hp, the second 80 hp. Butterley supplied both scoop wheels. The engines started work early in 1825, and continued in use until 1925.
A third steam engine was erected on the North bank of Vernatt's drain to lift water from Pinchbeck South Fen. This operated between the early 1830s until the end of the century. This was built as much because that fen was under separate control for those years as because the capacity was required. The water from the South drain is piped under Vernatt's drain to the Pode Hole station, much as it was tunnelled before the 1830 engine was built. (The idea of a tunnel under a river is not unique. Not far away at Bourne South Fen Gilbert Heathcote's Tunnel was built under the River Glen, and might have been the inspiration for the system at Pode Hole.)
The beam engines were maintained in storage until 1952, but then scrapped. Diesel engines were already in use across the fens when Pode Hole was modernised in 1925. The current Ruston diesel engines date from 1964 and vertical axis axial flow Foster Gwynnes pumps are driven by David Brown gear boxes. The second station alongside uses electric pumps and was built in the 1960s.
The original pumping station building is a major feature in the village, and is still in use for workshops and a small museum. The by-laws of the original commissioners are prominently posted on the outside.[4]
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Original pumping station -
Bylaws posted on the old pump station -
Modern pumping station -
The electric 'Adventurers Pumping Station' -
Ruston Diesel engine
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See also
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Pode Hole) |
- Length of drains maintained. Deeping Fen, Spalding & Pinchbeck internal drainage board. 1943. http://www.southhollandlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Deeping-Fen-IDB-drains-maintained-1943-to-1965.pdf.
References
- ↑ 'An Archaeological walk through Castle Bytham' (Heritage Trust of Lincolnshire, 2004) page 6
- ↑ Phil Jones (2001). "Early European instrumental records". History and Climate: Memories of the Future?. New York: Kluwer/Plenum. pp. 55–77.
- ↑ Welland and Deepings IDB
- ↑ National Monuments Record: No. 352439 – Pode Hole pumping station
- Hills, R L: 'Machines, Mills & uncountable costly necessities' (Goose & Co, 1967)