Now known as the Ryhope Engines Museum Sunderland area, providing it with a supply of clean water for a century before it closed in 1967. Though the station no longer pumps water, its two 100-horsepower beam engines are kept in working order and prodded into life for the benefit of visitors during regular ‘steam days’.
Like similar stations in the region, the idea was to draw clean water up from the magnesian limestone rocks below, and thus improve the lot of the expanding populations of the local towns – in this case Sunderland. It was all in response to the cholera epidemics of the early nineteenth century, of course, and followed various Acts of Parliament which facilitated the creation of the Sunderland & South Shields Water Company in 1852. In line with other similar stations (including that at Cleadon), Thomas Hawksley was the architect, the planning and construction process spanning 1864-68.
Museum website here.
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I worked at the Sunderland and South Shields Water Company in the 1960’s, testing water samples in their laboratory in John Street Sunderland. My job entailed visiting various reservoirs, wells, taking water samples back to be tested in the lab. I was a regular visitor to Ryhope Pumping station, Downhill reservoir and consumers homes. I had a key to unlock reservoirs and went down the steps to collect the samples. It was eerie, Health and safety would have a fit now a days! Our chief chemist was Mr Waterton, which I thought was very apt! Happy days. I now live in Nottingham Pauline Tilley
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