Brede Waterworks

East Sussex

 

The Tangye Engine House is in the foreground, the later Worthington Simpson house can be seen to the rear. The boiler house lies between the two engine houses.

Click on pictures to enlarge

Brede Waterworks contains two large Inverted Vertical Triple Expansion Pumping Engines and a variety of smaller machines. The engines are maintained by the Brede Steam Engine Society who have a webpage here. The site is open and the engines operated on compressed air usually on the first Saturday of the month but they do seem to open on Bank Holiday Mondays also. The site is owned by Southern Water who still use parts of it. They have their own webpage describing the site. There is a local events page here which has up to the minute details of opening dates and times.

The Tangye Engine

The station opened in 1904 with two Tangye Triple Expansion engines fired by four Babcock and Wilcox boilers. One engine was scrapped in 1969 but number two engine survives and is now immaculately restored by the Brede Steam Engine Society and operated on compressed air.

Tangye No. 2 Engine of 1904. 23.25", 38", 62" x 48". 410HP at 23 rpm.  

 

The barring gear is driven by a vertical Sissons engine.  Back view of rhe engine.  The crank drove the well pumps before they were replaced by electric pumps in 1933.

The condenser air pump is driven from a disc crank on the end of the crankshaft.  The electically driven well pump an be seen in the left of the picture.  The splendid control panel. The brass plate underneath commemorates the station's restoration and reopening as a museum.

 

The Worthington Simpson Engine

 

The Worthington Simpson engine was installed in 1940 to handle the increasing quantities of water provided from the new reservoir at Darwell. At the same time the old boilers were replaced with two new Babcock & Wilcox High Pressure boilers operating at 250 lbs/sqinch.

The engine has been restored to its original Brittania Blue livery with gold lining.           The control panel             Rear view of the engine.

 

  Expansion gear controls.  The vertical two cylinder barring engine.

The force pumps mounted below the engine.  The flywheels from the pump basement.  A small single cylinder Reader (Nottingham) engine driving a cooling water circulation pump.

The Boiler House Collection

The boilers were all scrapped after the electric pumps took over from the steam engines in 1964 but the space is now used to display a number of steam pumping engines from nearby stations. Many of these are demonstrated in motion using compressed air .

The pride of the collection is the 1889 Worthington type duplex triple expansion pumping engine built by James Simpson for the Cherry Garden Pumping Station in Folkestone.

The high pressure cylinders are at the left of the picture, Author and local historian George Coleman is barely visible at right.

 View from the pump end. These were the first Worthington designed engines built in the UK.  View from across the boiler house. A small Worthington feed pump in the foreground.  7, 10, 17.5 x 15 in stroke. slide valves, surface condenser.

  A contrasting engine is the side by side compound engine from Denge Marsh Waterworks. Supplied in 1918 by Worthington Simpson it is believed to have been built by Robey of Lincoln.

Flywheel end of the Denge engine Pump end view  The suspended dummy is demonstrating a winch.

A rare beast in captivity. A Pulsometer steam pump. This little banjo pump by A G Mumford of Colchester originally supplied water to the Water Superintendant's house in Dover. Worthington Simpson Vertical Duplex Pump.

  Inverted Vertical Compound by Reader of Nottingham driving a generator. ? Denge Waterworks. Dainty little boiler feed pump by The Worthington Pumping Engine Co.

The society provide light refreshments as well as a range of souvenirs and literature. An excellent series of local waterworks monographs by historian and member George Coleman are also available.

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