The Bygones Museum

Claydon

The stationary steam engine display. The engine nearest the camera is a Type B Merryweather portable fire pump built for the GWR in 1915.

 

Click on pictures to enlarge

 

This little village museum contains a vast collection of artefacts representing all aspects of rural life in the twentieth century. The collection contains several steam engines and models ranging from a full sized traction engine to a model beam engine. The three stationary steam engines on display were formerly steamed occasionally from the traction engine boiler but the present insurance position makes this impossible.

The Sissons engine was originally installed in a Smith Rodley steam crane. The other two engines came from the John Hunt (later Hunt & Edmunds) Brewery in Banbury.     

The Sissons vertical was supplied to Smith Rodley where it drove a dynamo to power an electromagnet in a steam crane lifting steel scrap.    The horizontal engine is by the little known manufacturer Henry Insey of Robin Hood Works, Nottingham. It worked all its life in the Hunt & Edmunds Brewery, Banbury where it powered the bottle washing department.    Another view of the horizontal. Note the grasshopper beam engine model in the background.

The most interesting engine of the three is the Lampitt Table Engine which was supplied new to John Hunts Brewery in 1838 from Lampitt's new works at the Vulcan Foundry. It worked all its life at the brewery and is now owned by Banbury Steam Engine Society together with the Insey horizontal.

The Lampitt table engine.    The Lampitt from the other side.  

Two small steam pumps, a horizontal duplex and a vertical Weir complete the collection. Neither is plumbed into the steam main.

The horizontal duplex pump. Probably a Worthington Simpson.   The Weir vertical pump.  

The museum no longer supports its own website but details of opening hours etc. can be found on http://www.ashmol.ox.ac.uk/omc/oxmus207.html

 

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