Herringswell Water Tower

Image © Tony Wilding for Images of England

BWTAS has been asked to remove the contact details for this tower as it is now let to a private tenant.

The once dilapidated but now beautiful estate water tower at Herringswell Manor has been converted into a unique two bedroom detached apartment of approximately 224 m² (or 2411 ft²) with access to the court yard and views over fields and a horse stud from the living room at the top of the tower.

Herringswell Manor has had a variety of tenants in its history. It was once a medina for the devotees of the Baghwan Shree Rajneesh. It was later taken over by an award winning property developer.

The tower is close to Herringswell village about 3 miles from Mildenhall.

The National Monuments Record has these details:

IoE Number: 275773

Location: WATERTOWER AND FLANKING COACH HOUSES, 320 METRES EAST OF HERRINGSWELL ROAD HERRINGSWELL, FOREST HEATH, SUFFOLK
Date Photographed: 16 August 2003
Grade II listed

C.1907, built to serve Herringswell Manor, the estate of A.W. Ballance. The lower stage of the tower is of red brick, with grand central entrance gateway; moulded and hood-moulded 4-centred arched opening of terracotta with pair of boarded doors. Above is a 4-light window with leaded casements. Above a moulded brick cornice, the upper stage oversails on 4 sides, with exposed joist-ends and diagonal beams on brackets; walling and gables of half-timbering with rough-cast infill. Plaintiled swept pyramid roof in 2 stages, with a set- forward gable at the upper stages framing a clock with bell above. Weather-vane finial. The flanking coach-houses, gable front, with similar arched doorways. Included for group value. The timber-framed and weather-boarded ranges to rear are not of special interest.

Tavira Water Tower/Camera Obscura

BWTAS is British in name but not in its outlook. In the Moorish* town of Tavira in the Algarve, Portugal, there is a delightful camera obscura housed in a redundant 1931 concrete water tower. The Torre de Tavira was founded in 2004 by English astronomer Clive Jackson and his wife Gloria who also run astronomy holidays from their observatory in the Algarve.

Looking over the tower from a construction viewpoint, it seems to be typical of the Mouchel pattern with an Intze floor. There are many water towers in the Algarve region. Like the famous variety of Algarve chimneys, some have Moorish influences in their detailing but most of the larger municipal towers such as at Portimao are fairly basic as they were built during the economic hardships of the Salazar era.

The Torre de Tavira occupies a prominent position at the top of the town and is right next door to the Igreja de Santa Maria and the town's castle, all are popular tourist destinations.

So what is a Camera Obscura?

When inside the darkened room (the former tank) a rotating mirror in the roof projects the view of the town onto a dished table whilst the guide gives a narrated tour. The view is telescopic, bringing sights far away into view, but it also has a wide field of view as the image is projected large onto the table with incredible precision, like a super high-definition screen.The effect of seeing very distant people, cars, trains and boats moving with such clarity is truly amazing.

For this reason, camera obscuras were very popular in pre-television times. Britain still has several although many have been lost and there is one in the Foredown Tower in Brighton which is situated in a..... yes, a former water tower.

If you plan to visit this tower, try not to confuse it with the Torre Tavira in Cadiz, Spain which is also a great camera obscura too but is NOT in a converted water tower. The tower, in the Baroque style, was part of the Palace of the Marquis of Recano whose first watchman, Antonio Tavira, gave it its name.

Some BWTAS members think there are a number of sites in the UK where concrete or metal water towers are ripe for this kind of conversion. The Jacksons have submitted plans for an astronomy 'Astrotel'. Seeing how well the camera obscura has been done, we wish them every success.

Thanks again to David Blackburn for his image.

Shrubland Park Water Tower

Coddenham, North of Ipswich OS Map ref TM128530

Shrubland Park is one of the finest examples of an Italianate house and garden in England. Sir Charles Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament, and Sir Humphrey Repton were the garden's principal designers. A water tower is still in use. It is of square construction in Suffolk white brick, heavily butressed with a battlement top about 80 feet high. The main tank is about 30,000 gallons in cast iron sections bolted together. The tank is filled by a well estimated at 120 feet deep adjacent to the tower. The tower is part of the site of the Old Hall and is it thought the well is even older. The hall was begun in the 1770's and altered and extended in the 1840's. The tower builders went to some length to make the tower an acceptable feature in the landscape.

The sale of the park was announced in 2006 and as far as we know it remains closed to the public.

Orwell Park School Water Tower

Orwell Park was once the home of the wealthy Victorian luminary Colonel George Tomline [1812 - 1889]. Tomline was an MP and was elected unopposed several times in rotten boroughs which then were commonplace. Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel once said the cleverest men in England were Tomline and his schoolfriend William Gladstone, in that order.

Tomline never married and his wealth, house and grounds were devoted to his patronage of the arts and sciences. He had one of the finest art collections in England including works by Holbein and Murillo and he built up a great library with many first and rare editions.

He purchased the 30,000 acre estate around 1848 or 1850 from Sir Robert Harland. He had the original house demolished and replaced with a red brick Italianate design, the grandest of three plans submitted to him. A rejected design is displayed at the school that now occupies the house. Over the years Tomline purchased vast areas of adjoining land including most of the Colneis Hundred to create the port of Felixstowe.

The house and the water tower were built between 1868 - 1873, firstly by eminent architect William Burn but after his death, most of the design is the work of his successor John MacVicar Anderson. His notable buildings include the mansions of Althorp, Brampton & Blankney Hall, Cheswardine Hall, Iden Manor and many commercial buildings including Coutts Bank in the Strand, the Carlton Club, the Royal Scottish Hospital and Royal Caledonian Asylum. He was president of the Royal Institute of British Architects from 1891 to 1894.

Tomline was a keen astronomer. The water tower is matched by a clock tower and an observatory tower which still has a 26 cm refractor, at the time the largest telescope in private hands. The water tower powered a hydraulic lift to the observatory.

Tomline was thought foolish at first to buy the estate when it hadn't got a reliable water supply (all the wells had turned brackish) but a spring was found in the woods a half mile away from the house. Along with the water tower there were filter beds which fed an underground reservoir and then an electric pump raised the water to a 10,000 gallon tank. From there it was fed to 26 tanks in the roof of the house.

The water tower had been in use up until recentlyand the tank is still intact. When the water supply to the school was switched to mains pressure, a number of leaks suddenly sprang up throughout the school. There's a saying "if it ain't broke...." When visited by BWTAS during the making of an episode of BBC Radio 4's Making History programme, the tower was being used for storage and housed the Ham Radio club. There are, as expected, stunning views from the top.


The school wonders what to do with the tower but are considering turning it into visitor's accommodation which could be let out during school holidays at the going rate.

Photo of Col. Tomline http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~ipswich/History/Tomline.jpg

Sources: http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~ipswich/Observatory/Founding.htm

Dame Mary Bolles Water Tower

Heath, Nr Wakefield, North Yorkshire NMR Number: SE 32 SE 20.

For centuries before piped water became generally available there occurred the occasional ambitious and ingenious scheme to bring it to the dwelling of the rich or influential.

In 1505 Richard de Wombwell, prior of Nostell, had conduit pipes laid from a well in Ryhill to take its water to the Priory (now a National Trust property). The well-head, recently restored, remains a feature of the landscape today.

About a hundred years later, this tower was erected above a natural spring and pumped fresh water via a water wheel to Old Heath Hall on the hill above. Mystery and wonder surround it as much today as it did in the 1600's. Both modern and ancient pagans consider the spring sacred and Dame Mary is said to have dabbled in witchcraft. She asked that the room where she died (in 1662) in the old hall should be sealed. When it was unsealed, 50 years later, it is claimed that her ghost appeared and proceeded to haunt the surrounding heath.

Lady Bolles (1579-1662) owned the Heath estate from 1635 until her death at the age of 80, having purchased the Hall from the Kay family. First married to Thomas Jobson of Cudworth and, after his death, to Thomas Bolles of Osberton, Notts, she was created a baronetess by Charles I. Lady Bolles's will, made in the year she died, refers to "the water tower or conduit, which she lately built, with the lead works and iron works belonging to it."

The system was an unusual, perhaps even unique. The spring fed into a cistern from which, in turn, water flowed to power an 18-foot wheel. This provided the force to pump some of the water to the top of the tower from which height it would pass, probably by means of an overhead, lead-lined conduit, to the gateway at the old Hall.

Here, a further building, designed with the appearance of a gatehouse or lodge, held the huge storage cistern. This building, of a similar style and stonework to the water tower, like other of the outbuildings at the Hall, bears Lady Bolles's coat of arms.

How long the system functioned is not known, but it may well have survived into the 19th century, though not, apparently, beyond the 1830s.

Lady Green, whose book, The Old Hall at Heath 1568- was published in 1889, refers to the tower and spring: "This spring used to be a very copious and never-failing stream, but it is much diminished by the sinking of a coal pit that tapped the water bearing stratum; nevertheless, it is excellent in colour and quality."

The spring does, in fact, still flow with perhaps no greater loss of force than Lady Green records.

The tower stimulates considerable curiosity but its real nature is even more striking than its strange isolation suggests since it is a very early survival of English skill in hydraulic engineering.

A video of the tower is here

(Thanks to David Blackburn for much of this information.)

Water Towers and Music

In 2007 the cult indie band British Sea Power came to Freston near Ipswich to record songs for their next album and shoot a video in the 1950's water tower there. They discovered that it had unique acoustic qualities, like a cathedral, with a sixteen second reverberation. Apparently they found the tower for rent on the internet. The former owners had tried for years to attract investment to convert it into a recording studio before they sold it on to a developer who now hopes to build apartments there. Those plans look interesting. They will have a fantastic view over the Orwell River and have a roof garden where the tank was.

Water towers have influenced many musicians. The American harmonic overtone singer Jim Cole records in a 120' tall metal water tower. "Because of the heavy reverberation, utter silence and pitch blackness offered, singing in a water tower was ideal..." he says.“You hear everything in super slow motion,” and as metal towers can be made to resonate and become an instrument as well, he found in his tower there was between 20 and 30 seconds of reverberation.

In Seattle, the Volunteer Park Water Tower was made into a 'sonic installation' by an outfit called Audible Semaphore
who composed pieces to accompany the views from the top of the tower. This tower, although not particularly distinctive architecturally, is a very popular tourist destination and a cultural landmark for residents.

In 1975, the first album released on Brian Eno's Obscure record label was Gavin Bryar's 'The Sinking of the Titanic' which was recorded in a Napoleonic water tower in Bourges, the atmospheric effect o

f the tower's acoustics adding greatly to the watery themes of the music, according to critics.

Do you know any other instances of music made in water towers? Please get in touch.

BWTAS talk at NIAS

Everything you wanted to know about Water Towers but were afraid to ask.


Nat Bocking and Ferrers Young from BWTAS will give an illustrated talk to the NORFOLK INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY SOCIETY on Thursday Oct 2nd (their meeting are the 1st Thurs of each month) at 7.30 pm.

Talks are held in the Stanley Cooper Room at the Charing Cross Centre, 17-19 St John Maddermarket, Norwich.

Admission is free. Visitors or prospective NIAS or BWTAS members are most welcome. The room has full access including a lift and toilets close by. Click here for a Multi-Map

Lendal Tower

David Blackburn sent in these recent pictures of the Lendal water tower in York. The construction is for the conversion of the tower into flats. It's a wonderful location, I hope the occupants won't mind cameras pointed at their windows, this is a very photographed sight in the city.


It is good to see that the history of the tower is on a plaque.

Water towers and wildlife

There are bat boxes in a number of water towers in the UK placed by the Bat Conservation Trust. Now it seems if Suffolk's water towers can have a role in increasing the population of peregrine falcons which are wonderful birds that keep the pigeon population in check. Pigeon droppings and corpses are a real nuisance in water towers. Even though they can be kept out of the water itself, it's a foul job cleaning up after them with access quite difficult in these circumstances. So if falcons can keep the pigeons away, they are very useful to water tower keepers.

The Suffolk Ornithologists' Group helped provide a nestbox on the Orwell Bridge in the 1990s and with that success, is now planning to expand the scheme across the county. It is looking for sites and approaching owners of water towers and other tall structures where the birds can nest undisturbed.

Priors Hill Road Aldeburgh

This is the Priors Hill Road water tower in the grounds of AldeburghCommunity Hospital, Suffolk. Once owned by Northumbrian Water, few details were known about this 1870's Victorian tower but compared to others in the area, it's detailing and build quality is exceptional and worthy of note.

It had been disused since the early 1980's and was becoming dangerous as lumps of masonry started falling off. Then it changed hands in April 2007 for £407,000 (more than double the expected price) at auction which was a surprise to many as it has no planning permission, is Grade II listed and has no right of way but it would make fantastic second home and being Aldeburgh, that is cheap for what could be a six bedroom house on a private road with views for miles around.

BWTAS would like to hear from the owners if they would like to make themselves known to us with complete confidence of their privacy.