Wednesday, 8 April 2009

Melton Constable, Norfolk (1898)

Melton Constable was a railway town and known as “the Crewe of North Norfolk”. Just as the residents of Merredin, Western Australia benefited from a water supply from the railway way water tower, Melton Constable had piped water supplied by the Midland and Great Northern Railway Company.
The M & GN Railway Company had its headquarters in Melton Constable and built the cast iron water tower in 1898 to supply the locomotives, the vast engineering works and the town. It consists of three conjoined tanks formed in bolted plate sections standing on a platform of cast iron columns with diagonal tension bracing. Each of the tank's 256 external panels was cast with the company’s initials embossed. The tower is still standing - next to the Melton Road, just off the B1354 at O.S. Grid Ref TG 04117 32920 and is currently used for irrigation and I understand that it has a Roll Royce pump. It has a capacity of 125,000 gallons.
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4 comments:

  1. Unknown30 September 2009 at 20:44

    Does anyone know if this tower is Listed? If not, would there be support for an application to have it Listed now?

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  2. Pie Master3 October 2009 at 22:09

    Looking at the list of listed buildings in North Norfolk (http://www.northnorfolk.org/files/NNDC_Listed_Buildings.pdf) the water tower is not mentioned, so I guess it is not listed. I agree that it should be.

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  3. Anonymous4 July 2011 at 22:55

    It has been re-roofed since then: at the time of visiting (3rd July 2011) the roof was clearly new. The rest of the tower appeared to be in the same condition as the photo from 2009.

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  4. Pie Master14 July 2011 at 22:31

    That is good news, as there was talk of demolition once - thanks for the update.

    I was recently at a talk given by Adrian Vaughan (www.adrianvaughan.co.uk) on the effects of the opening of the M&GN Railway, that included the provision of potable water. I raised the issue of the tower not being listed, he was sure that if has not been listed, then people are working on getting it listed. Checking the English Heritage web site this evening, I find no mention of it.

    Ferrers

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