On Thursday 28th May a group of 20 members of the Local History Group made a visit to Papplewick station. The pumping station was built in the 1880’s at a total cost of around £55,000 equivalent to about £4.76 million today.

The boiler room contains 6 boilers of which 2 are now in use. The pumping station does have regular steaming days through the year. There are some ornate designs on the pillars in the boiler room. There are 2 beam engines in the pumping room. The decorations in the pumping room are very ornate considering it was just a working room.

The lake in front of the pumping room uses water from the mains. Water from the lake is used to cool the engines. The water was raised from the ground and was transferred to an underground reservoir which is about half a mile away. We were transported to the underground reservoir in a luxury coach (a trailer towed by a tractor!).

The building is quite amazing inside. There are lots of arches. The reservoir used to hold about 1.5 million gallons of water. It was built in the 1880’s but went out of use in 1906 when a crack appeared in a wall. There is a new underground reservoir alongside built in 1956 which is still in use and holds about 2.5 million gallons.

The pumping station is still in use and water still comes from the same place but it is all electric pumps - pumping by steam went out of use in 1969..