Pumping station appeal as flooding threat looms
A Bath museum has made a plea for help ahead of flooding expected this winter.
Claverton Pumping Station, on the River Avon near Warleigh Weir, supplied the canal with water for around 150 years.
Nowadays, the Grade I-listed building is open to visitors in summer and maintained by a small team of volunteers.
But Julian Stirling, their leader, has appealed for support in protecting the museum’s collection from high water levels.
The 33-year-old said: “Normally we get fairly minimal damage because there is a wall where the water rises to about two metres high before it comes in.
“But when the level rises it rushes through the building like a rapid. We become part of the river.
“Everything downstairs that is made of wood and not bolted down has to be taken outside or it would cause a lot of damage.”
The pumping station houses an enormous water wheel measuring five metres in diameter, which was built at the height of the industrial revolution
This wheel powered a large beam engine that pumped 50 gallons of water every two seconds from the River Avon 48 feet up to the Kennet and Avon canal.
It operated until 1952, was restored between 1969 and 1976, and is looked after by the Claverton Pumping Station Group.
Every year Julian and his team clear everything out of the museum and pack it away in several storage sheds on the hill.
However, their biggest shed has reached the end of its life and they urgently need £2,500 in funding to build another storage room.
“We cut it fine this year. We started taking stuff outside on a Tuesday in October and on Thursday we had a flash flood,” he said.
“The outbuildings are on a hill and each time we build one higher up, the floods reach it. For example, the highest flood ever was in 1882 and we know that would go up to the top of the sheds.
“So we have been putting the sheds on stilts, but that takes its toll on them, so the plan this time is to build a sturdier outbuilding, higher up.”
The museum has an Engineering Heritage Award from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and a Red Wheel Plaque from the National Trust.
However, it was unable to open at all during 2020 and managed just a few visitor bookings over the summer of 2021.
So, Julian has launched a crowdfunding page to raise the money needed for a new outbuilding.
He said: “It’s going to cost £2,000 just for the wood due to supply issues. At the moment, upstairs in the pump room, we have piled a lot of things that should be out in the storage shed. But it is hard to do the maintenance with all the stuff there, we have to shuffle it about. A couple of the other sheds are very small and it takes about an hour to find anything.”
Of course, flooding isn’t a just recent problem for the museum and there are high-water marks on the wall dating back to 1815.
Julian said: “It’s always been a problem but you can’t build a pumping station away from the river.
“In summer, two tonnes of water a second go through the wheel, and it would have been pumped using steam up to the canal. It’s a great thing for visitors to be able to come and visit.”
To help, go to: www.justgiving. com/crowdfunding/clavertonpumping-station.