TrustNews Jun 21
The Pump House, Garnier Road - Robin Merton
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!
The original power for the pumps was provided by two double-acting beam engines. 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 & Simpson and an additional coal-fired boiler by Babcocks & Wilcox. In 1932 another extension was built to house three large Pearns pumps driven by Allen two-stroke 9Ohp 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 Aliens 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. ln the event, the chimney, which was a landmark on the southern boundary of the City, was unsafe and had to be demolished.