Water to Newcastle (NY968763 & thereabouts)

When we think of the water supply provided to the region, the mighty Kielder Water springs instantly to mind. However, a number of other reservoirs form part of the intricate network of watery connections that keep the North-East quenched – with three of the most important crowded into a few square miles of the Northumbrian countryside about eight miles north of Hexham.

Colt Crag, Little Swinburne and Hallington Reservoirs were all built a long time before the 1970s creation that is Kielder Water, being completed, as they were, in 1871 (East Hallington), 1884 (Colt Crag), 1886 (Little Swinburne) and 1889 (West Hallington). Their construction finally brought to an end centuries of struggle to feed an ever-thirsty Tyneside, all but banishing the threat, finally, of typhus – to say nothing of the needs of fire-fighting. Prior to this, glorified ponds on the Town Moor, Arthur’s Hill and at Carr Hill, Gateshead, struggled manfully against the booming populations either side of the Tyne.

Between the ‘heyday’ of the aforementioned ‘ponds’ and the new complex of 1871-89, Whittle Dene Reservoirs (completed 1848), a little to the SE, carried the responsibility of water supply for the area. And, when it was ready, the Hallington/Swinburne/Colt Crag supply was bolted onto the Whittle Dene system before being piped to Newcastle and Gateshead. The network was further extended in 1904 when Catcleugh Reservoir near the Scottish border was brought into use. And then, seventy years later, there was Kielder.

The really quite amazing (and largely hidden) system of tunnels, pipes and aqueducts that connect these large expanses of fresh water both to each other and their points of service was the result of the work of the Newcastle and Gateshead Water Company… and is one of the hidden wonders of the Great North-East.

Ryhope Pumping Station (NZ403524)

 

Now known as the Ryhope Engines Museum, this splendid landmark is one of the best examples of its kind to have survived from the Victorian era.  It was opened in 1868 to serve the 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.

Cleadon Landmarks 1: Water Tower (NZ387636)

  

 

Looking much the same in 1900 (above) as it does today, Cleadon Water Tower was built during 1859-62 as part of the water pumping station of the Sunderland & South Shields Water Company – an organisation which itself had only been formed after an Act of Parliament of 1852. The plant fell out of use years ago, but the tower and many of the outbuildings remain, having found alternative uses. The tower is, in fact (or rather was), a chimney for the old steam-powered pumps which drew clean water from the depths below. The well itself, one of several in the area, was 12ft in diameter and 258ft in depth. Strangely, little is known of the pumps which drove the station – they were removed in 1930 when the plant was electrified.

The elegant Italianate brick construction was designed by Thomas Hawksley and was typical of its day. It is 100ft tall, with a balcony near its summit, and is visible for miles around. An internal staircase spirals around the chimney’s central flue – a void now largely filled with radio aerials and the like.