Hundred Foot Pumping Station
HUNDRED FOOT PUMPING STATION
Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places
Overview
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II*
- List Entry Number:
- 1160847
- Date first listed:
- 26-Feb-1985
- List Entry Name:
- Hundred Foot Pumping Station
- Statutory Address:
- HUNDRED FOOT PUMPING STATION
Location
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Images of England Project
- Date:
- 2005-01-24
- Reference:
- IOE01/11673/33
- Rights:
- © Mr Alan Francis Polaine. Source: Historic England Archive
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Official list entry
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II*
- List Entry Number:
- 1160847
- Date first listed:
- 26-Feb-1985
- List Entry Name:
- Hundred Foot Pumping Station
- Statutory Address 1:
- HUNDRED FOOT PUMPING STATION
The scope of legal protection for listed buildings
This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.
Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.
For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.
The scope of legal protection for listed buildings
This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.
Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.
For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.
Location
- Statutory Address:
- HUNDRED FOOT PUMPING STATION
The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.
- County:
- Cambridgeshire
- District:
- East Cambridgeshire (District Authority)
- Parish:
- Downham
- National Grid Reference:
- TL 50764 89150
Details
TL 58 NW DOWNHAM PYMORE
2/18 Hundred Foot Pumping Station
II*
Pumping station. 1830, designed by Joseph Gwynne for the Littleport and Downham Commissioners, replacing a windmill, one of seventy-five in the area. Gault brick, slate and corrugated asbestos roofs. Three storey engine house with wheelhouse to right hand and boiler room and workshop, originally the coking shed, to left hand. Gabled elevation to engine house has double sliding doors at ground floor, and one round arched and one flat arched fixed light windows with cast iron glazing bars at first and second floors; and two plaques inscribed 'These fens have of times been by Water drown'd, Science a remedy in Water found, The power of Steam she said shall be employ'd, And the Destroyer by Itself destroy'd - Erected AD 1830: and 'Littleport and Downham District Commissioners Hundred Foot Pumping stn, 1756 windmill. 1830 Steam engine eight scoop wheel 41ft diameter. 1882. Scoop wheel increased to 50 ft. 1914. 400hp Gwynnes Steam Engine and pump replace scoop wheel and displaced 200 tons a minute. 1926 230hp Mirrlees oil-engine, 1951 Ruston Oil Engine 540hp replaces Gwynne engine. Interior: The 1914 pump is still in use powered by the Ruston Oil Engine which replaced the original engine. The paved second floor and stair is intact, the lower galleries have been removed. The boilers in the boiler house have been converted for diesel oil storage. The original engine was designed to pump water at two speeds into the tidal river, the second wheel with 50ft diameter was the largest in the fens. The station was built on a raft of 600 piles with 300,000 bricks. It is shortly to be replaced by a new pumping station to be built on the site of the engine house built in 1926 for the Mirrlees oil engine.
Hills, R.L: Machines Mills and Uncountable Costly Necessity 1967 Alderton, D and Booker, J: Batsford Guide to the Industrial Archaeology of East Anglia 1980 V.C.H. p.90 Pevsner: Buildings of England p331 Country Life, Vol. 138, p875, 1965
Listing NGR: TL5076489150
Legacy
The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.
- Legacy System number:
- 49471
- Legacy System:
- LBS
Sources
Books and journals
Salzman, L F, The Victoria History of the County of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely, (1982), 90
Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: Cambridgeshire, (1954), 331
Alderton, , Booker, , The Batsford Guide to the Industrial Archaeology of East Anglia, (1980), 331
Hills, R L, Machines Mills and Uncountable Costly Necessity, (1967)
Country Life in 14 January, Vol. 138, (1965), 875
Legal
This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.
Map
This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. This copy shows the entry on 10-Jun-2026 at 16:36:54.
Download a full scale map (PDF)End of official list entry
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