Below is a photograph I took when I visited on May Bank Holiday, its shows one of the two restored Gimson 13 ton Beam engines as seen from the top floor of C/D Engine House.
Read on for details....
The pumping station is maintained and run by a dedicated team of volunteers who give up their time and effort to restore the site for the public to see.
There is plenty for you to see when visiting...
There are two engine houses, one of them houses two fully restored Gimson steam engines that you will see operating. The other engine house has yet to be restored and when you walk around that one it makes you appreaciate just how much work as gone into restoring the other engine house.
Between the two engine houses is the boiler house, with five Lancashire boilers. These boliers date from 1937 and replaced the original boilers.
The Dynamo house which houses the oldest electrical generating equipment in the UK.
The is a Blacksmiths and a Joiners shop where you can see items being made.
There is a small Tea Rooms which includes a visitor centre and toilets.
On steam days there are vintage cars to look at and you can go one a ride on a small steam engine.
This pumping station site is Grade II listed and is described by English Heritage as “The most complete site of its kind in the UK”
Why was Claymills built:
The town of Burton upon Trent had a more acute problem of sewage disposal in the mid 1800's than any other town or city in Britain, due to the large number of breweries situated in the area. The brewing processes generated a large quantity of foul smelling, high temperature, sulphate rich effluent which also contained a lot of suspended matter. This was all discharged into local brooks and streams, which became open sewers, until eventually the crude sewage ran into the River Trent.
It was decided to build a pumping station on the site of the sedimentation tanks to pump the effluent some 2¼ miles to a sewage farm which would be built to deal with the sewage. The Burton on Trent Corporation obtained an act of Parliament in 1880 allowing them to execute these works.
The site has four Woolf compound rotatative beam pumping engines located in two seperate engine houses.
Here is a list of dates when Claymills Pumping Station is open.
June Open Days 19th & 20th June (Engines are not in steam)
July Open Days 10th & 11th, 24th & 25th July (Engines are not in steam
August Bank Holiday 29th & 30th August
Heritage Open Days 11th & 12th September (Engines are not in steam)
September 25th & 26th September
October 16th & 17th October
New Year 2nd & 3rd January 2011
So the NEXT "steaming day" at Claymills is August Bank Holiday: Sunday & Monday August 29th & 30th (10.00 am - 5.00 pm)
Admission prices on Steaming Days:
Adults £4 Concessions £3 Children £2 Family £10
The Museum is also open for static viewing on Thursdays (10:00am - 3:00pm) and Saturdays (10:00am - 5:00pm) When admission is free, but donations are gratefully accepted.
How do I get there from Derby?
Claymills is just an 8 Minute drive down the A38 from Derby (The A5111 Kingsway Island). If you are using a Sat Nav then use the postcode “DE13 ODA” to get to the end of Meadow Lane.
Once there you need to drive straight over the level crossing, assuming the gates are up :) then follow the road around until you come to a left turn at which you need to drive straight on, eventually this road will take you to the car park. Once parked up you need to walk back the way you drove in and look for the Gatehouse entrance to Claymills pumping station.
See my map below for exact details, Use the link below to the map to get a large map that you can print out and take with you.
View Claymills pumping station, Burton upon Trent. in a larger map
This pumping station is maintained by The Claymills Pumping Engines Trust Ltd, Meadow Lane, Stretton, Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, U.K.
For more information on Claymills Pumping Station please visit their website:
http://www.claymills.org.uk/
If you have never been to this place before and like Victorian engineering then get yourself along to the next open day. Post your comments to this blog post if you enjoyed your visit there.
Andy
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