John Norris Remembers
The Upware pumps
I recently paid a visit to the County Records Library to see if I could find
any photographs of the pumping engines at Upware. I was lucky to find the ones
I needed to complete my memoirs. It is all very well in looking at very old
photos, but they have a lot more interest if they record a memory which has now
been removed, and which was recorded as you remembered it.
I am referring to the chimney, which took away the smoke from the steam engine. This drove the water wheel used to splash the water from the drains into the river Cam. I say, "splash" because this wheel was a very poor device, lifting the water over a sill and then away down a channel to the river. It was the best available at the time, and was really an improved wind driven water-wheel.
At Upware there were two of these large buildings, one of which is there today. Conversions into dwellings do have a beneficial side, in that most of these buildings would have been demolished. The one nearest the village pumped Burwell Fen, and is still there, whereas the one over the Lode pumped the Swaffham side of the Drainage District. There must have been much activity in receiving supplies of coal, and the manpower needed to keep the fires burning. An old photo of one of the boiler houses shows the three boilers that were required to keep the wheels turning; and they were large, some twenty feet long.
These two engines were built probably as a result of a Drainage Board being created in 1853, which enabled the members to raise a tax, or drainage rate, on all the land deriving benefit from these pumps. There was an old pump built in 1817 further from the village, and on lower ground, which may have been a conversion of a wind pump installed by a nearby landowner. This pump would account for the bend in the main drain, to get the water to the site.
As time passed by the fen began to shrink because of the water being removed. This made the wheel more inefficient as it had less depth of water to paddle, as it could not easily be moved! These pumps were obviously appreciated by the turf diggers, the coprolite miners and the farmers who benefited from the lower watertable. So in 1927 a five-cylinder diesel engine attached to a rotary pump was installed next to the water wheel. This was a huge improvement. No coal shovelling, or ash removal; just an occasional squirt with the oilcan, and removal of weed from the weed-screen.
The platform for this engine is still there, although it is slowly sliding into
the water. A good view is obtained from the towing path alongside the Lode. The
engine itself is under a blue sheet in the compound, together with parts of the
pump (at time of writing)! The use of diesel power soon caught on, and the
Board decided to replace all the water wheels, and install a very powerful
engine in place of the Swaffham Engine. The building was pulled down, only the
base of the chimney remaining, which I remember well. This was sold for the
bricks in the 1960's, and is now gone.
When the Ruston 200 HP was installed in 1939 and the Burwell wheel decommissioned, the water it removed had to be connected to the Swaffham drains. This was done by a tunnel under the Lode at Priory farm. The whole district was now drained by two Diesel engines. During the 1963 heavy rains these engines ran non-stop for three weeks. The improved drainage caused the fen to shrink even further, so that in 1957 an electric pump was necessary to maintain the lower level of water in the drains. The diesel pumps have to be full of water before they will work, and this became harder to accomplish the further they are from the drain level In 1992 these lovely huge diesel engines ran for the last time, being replaced by two extra submersible electric pumps. So now it is all regulated by wireless from the headquarters at Prickwillow. We were lucky in being told of the last run so that a cine film could be made of the event. The scrap merchants have left the large rotary pump in the building, as it was not easy to remove it, and at the same time prevent the river water from running back into the drains.
The Lode and locks have been modernised, all electric now. The board does have an arrangement with the electricity suppliers to provide generators should the power fail. If you have not been that way recently, it is worth a visit, even though you cannot see the pumps any more. Just the three siphon breakers all smart in their black paint, but you can imagine the activity of the old times.