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Crofton Pumping Station
Crofton Pumping Station, near the village of Great Bedwyn in Wiltshire, England, supplies the summit pound of the Kennet and Avon Canal with water. The steam-powered pumping station is preserved and operates on selected weekends. It contains an operational Boulton & Watt steam engine dating from 1812, making it the oldest working beam engine in the world in its original engine house and capable of doing the job for which it was installed. Description When the canal was built, no reliable water sources were available to fill the summit by normal gravitational means. However, a set of usable springs were found adjacent to the canal route about east of the summit pound, and about below it. Arrangements were made for these springs to feed the pound below lock 60 at Crofton Locks. Some years later a reservoir ( Wilton Water) was created to improve the supply to this pound, and this can now be seen across the canal from the pumping station. Water from below lock 60 was t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pumping Station
Pumping stations, also called pumphouses in situations such as drilled wells and drinking water, are facilities containing pumps and equipment for pumping fluids from one place to another. They are used for a variety of infrastructure systems, such as the supply of water to canals, the drainage of low-lying land, and the removal of sewage to processing sites. A pumping station is an integral part of a pumped-storage hydroelectricity installation. Canal water supply In countries with canal systems, pumping stations are also frequent. Because of the way the system of canal locks work, water is lost from the upper part of a canal each time a vessel passes through. Also, most lock gates are not watertight, so some water leaks from the higher levels of the canal to those lower down. Obviously, the water has to be replaced or eventually the upper levels of the canal would not hold enough water to be navigable. Canals are usually fed by diverting water from streams and rivers into ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Water Well
A well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The well water is drawn up by a pump, or using containers, such as buckets or large water bags that are raised mechanically or by hand. Water can also be injected back into the aquifer through the well. Wells were first constructed at least eight thousand years ago and historically vary in construction from a simple scoop in the sediment of a dry watercourse to the qanats of Iran, and the stepwells and sakiehs of India. Placing a lining in the well shaft helps create stability, and linings of wood or wickerwork date back at least as far as the Iron Age. Wells have traditionally been sunk by hand digging, as is still the case in rural areas of the developing world. These wells are inexpensive and low-tech as they use mostly manual labour ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Listed Building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency in Northern Ireland. The term has also been used in the Republic of Ireland, where buildings are protected under the Planning and Development Act 2000. The statutory term in Ireland is "protected structure". A listed building may not be demolished, extended, or altered without special permission from the local planning authority, which typically consults the relevant central government agency, particularly for significant alterations to the more notable listed buildings. In England and Wales, a national amenity society must be notified of any work to a listed building which involves any element of demolition. Exemption from secular listed building control is provided for some buildings in current use for worsh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman (; 28 August 190619 May 1984) was an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death. He was a founding member of The Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture, helping to save St Pancras railway station from demolition. He began his career as a journalist and ended it as one of the most popular British Poets Laureate and a much-loved figure on British television. Life Early life and education Betjeman was born John Betjemann. He was the son of a prosperous silverware maker of Dutch descent. His parents, Mabel (''née'' Dawson) and Ernest Betjemann, had a family firm at 34–42 Pentonville Road which manufactured the kind of ornamental household furniture and gadgets distinctive to Victorians. During the First World War the family name was changed to the less German-looking Betjeman. His father's forebears had actually come from the present day Netherlands more than a century earlier, set ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West India Dock Company
The West India Docks are a series of three docks, quaysides and warehouses built to import goods from and export goods and occasionally passengers to the British West Indies on the Isle of Dogs in London the first of which opened in 1802. Following their commercial closure in 1980, the Canary Wharf development was built around the wet docks by narrowing some of their broadest tracts. History Early history Robert Milligan, of a Scottish family, (–1809) was largely responsible for the construction of the West India Docks. He was a wealthy West Indies merchant, slave trader and ship owner, who returned to London having managed his family's Jamaica sugar plantations. Outraged at losses due to theft and delay at London's riverside wharves, Milligan headed a group of powerful businessmen, including the chairman of the London Society of West India Planters and Merchants, George Hibbert, a merchant, politician, and ship-owner, who promoted the creation of a wet dock circled by a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ... with the southwest, west and West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838 with the initial route completed between London and Bristol in 1841. It was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who chose a broad gauge of —later slightly widened to —but, from 1854, a series of Consolidation (business), amalgamations saw it also operate Standard gauge, standard-gauge trains; the last broad-gauge services were operated in 1892. The GWR was the only company to keep its identity through the Railways Act 1921, which ama ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Force Pump
A piston pump is a type of positive displacement pump where the high-pressure seal reciprocates with the piston. Piston pumps can be used to move liquids or compress gases. They can operate over a wide range of pressures. High pressure operation can be achieved without adversely affecting flow rate. Piston pumps can also deal with viscous media and media containing solid particles. This pump type functions through a piston cup, oscillation mechanism where down-strokes cause pressure differentials, filling of pump chambers, where up-stroke forces the pump fluid out for use. Piston pumps are often used in scenarios requiring high, consistent pressure and in water irrigation or delivery systems. Types The two main types of piston pump are the lift pump and the force pump. Both types may be operated either by hand or by an engine. Lift pump In a lift pump, the upstroke of the piston draws water, through a valve, into the lower part of the cylinder. On the downstroke, water passes th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hayle
Hayle ( kw, Heyl, "estuary") is a port town and civil parish in west Cornwall, England. It is situated at the mouth of the Hayle River (which discharges into St Ives Bay) and is approximately seven miles (11 km) northeast of Penzance. Hayle parish was created in 1888 from part of the now defunct Phillack parish, with which it was later combined in 1935, and incorporated part of St Erth in 1937. The modern parish shares boundaries with St Ives to the west, St Erth to the south, Gwinear and Gwithian in the east, and is bounded to the north by the Celtic Sea. History Early history Although there is a long history of settlement in the Hayle Estuary area dating from the Bronze Age, the modern town of Hayle was built predominantly during the 18th century industrial revolution. Evidence of Iron Age settlement exists at the fort on the hill above Carnsew Pool where the Plantation now stands. It is thought that Hayle was an important centre for the neolithic tin in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lift Pump
A piston pump is a type of positive displacement pump where the high-pressure seal reciprocates with the piston. Piston pumps can be used to move liquids or compress gases. They can operate over a wide range of pressures. High pressure operation can be achieved without adversely affecting flow rate. Piston pumps can also deal with viscous media and media containing solid particles. This pump type functions through a piston cup, oscillation mechanism where down-strokes cause pressure differentials, filling of pump chambers, where up-stroke forces the pump fluid out for use. Piston pumps are often used in scenarios requiring high, consistent pressure and in water irrigation or delivery systems. Types The two main types of piston pump are the lift pump and the force pump. Both types may be operated either by hand or by an engine. Lift pump In a lift pump, the upstroke of the piston draws water, through a valve, into the lower part of the cylinder. On the downstroke, water passes t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cornish Engine
A Cornish engine is a type of steam engine developed in Cornwall, England, mainly for pumping water from a mine. It is a form of beam engine that uses steam at a higher pressure than the earlier engines designed by James Watt. The engines were also used for powering man engines to assist the underground miners' journeys to and from their working levels, for winching materials into and out of the mine, and for powering on-site ore stamping machinery. Background: The steam engine in Cornwall Cornwall has long had tin, copper and other metal ore mines, but if mining is to take place at greater depths, a means to dewater the mine must be found. Lifting the weight of water up from the depths requires great amounts of work input. This energy may be weakly supplied by horse power or a waterwheel to operate pumps, but horses have limited power and waterwheels need a suitable stream of water. Accordingly, the innovation of coal-fired steam power to work pumps was more versati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boulton And Watt
Boulton & Watt was an early British engineering and manufacturing firm in the business of designing and making marine and stationary steam engines. Founded in the English West Midlands around Birmingham in 1775 as a partnership between the English manufacturer Matthew Boulton and the Scottish engineer James Watt, the firm had a major role in the Industrial Revolution and grew to be a major producer of steam engines in the 19th century. The engine partnership The partnership was formed in 1775 to exploit Watt's patent for a steam engine with a separate condenser. This made much more efficient use of its fuel than the older Newcomen engine. Initially the business was based at the Soho Manufactory near Boulton's Soho House on the southern edge of the then-rural parish of Handsworth. However most of the components for their engines were made by others, for example the cylinders by John Wilkinson. In 1795, they began to make steam engines themselves at their Soho Foun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
