The Pump House, Garnier Road - TrustNews June 09
Towards the end of March this year, a number of the Trust’s councillors paid a visit to the former sewage pumping station in Garnier Road. It has been cleverly converted into offices now occupied by “The Remarkable Group”, a PR and creative design agency.
Commissioned in 1878, the building and its associated sewerage scheme was completed in 1882. This alleviated Winchester’s deplorable waste water drainage problem which had been a running sore since medieval times, exacerbated by increasing industrial activity and a growing population. The rising use of piped water provided by the Water Works Company had not been matched by a service to carry away the growing volume of waste water. For instance, the hospital in Parchment Street discharged its effluent straight into the Upper Brook, then an open stream, as did the slaughterhouses. Everywhere there were putrid cess pits, and the River Itchen provided ‘fresh’ water and acted as a sewer! Disease was rife; there was a cholera epidemic in 1834; and life expectancy was 42 to 50 years. In the densely inhabited areas of the City the stench was unimaginable.
The original power for the pumps was provided by two double-acting beam engines manufactured by Grimson of Leicester. Steam was raised by three side-by-side coal-fired Lancashire boilers housed to the rear of the main building. In 1904 an extension was built to house a new a new triple expansion steam engine by Worthington and Simpson and an additional coal-fired boiler by Babcocks and Wilcox. In 1932 another extension was built to house three large Pearns pumps driven by Allen two-stroke 90hp diesels. A second Babcocks was added and refuse used as fuel as it was cheaper than coal. The clinker thus produced was used to surface the footpath beside the Lockburn stream that runs past the Pump House on its western side.
In 1950 the triple expansion engine was replaced by an electric centrifugal pump and two of the Allens were replaced by four cylinder Ruston Hornsby diesels of a similar rating. Major changes took place in 1958 and 1959. The much loved beam engines were removed, a new and larger Babcocks was installed serving two Sissons steam engines. The pumps were together capable of lifting over seven million gallons every 24 hours to a height of 170 feet to the sewage farm about half a mile away. The final phase of mechanisation took place in 1987, when a fully automated electric pumping system was installed in a new building behind the Pump House, and that is still in service today.
Until the building and the site were sold, the previous owners were content to let the building decay. In the event, the chimney, which was a landmark on the southern boundary of the City, was unsafe and had to be demolished. Today the refurbished building bears little evidence of its grimy, clanking and sulphurous industrial past, but its history is not forgotten. The architect Chris Hughes of CH Design (Europe) Ltd., in partnership with Michael Radford and Bob Shelley, has designed an office conversion fizzing with contemporary features but respectful of the building’s past. Much of the original steelwork, roof trusses, brickwork, green and white wall tiling and the overhead gantries remain, stylishly incorporated into a light, spacious and airy working environment. Indeed without the gantries it would have been difficult to remove some of the machinery which weighed up to five tons. With the addition of a mezzanine deck floor and a glass atrium it is a pleasant and attractive working space.
With grateful acknowledgements to Kirkbridge Properties Ltd., The Remarkable Group, Chris Hughes and not least, Raymond John Whale, a former operative at the Pump House.