Latest Tweet

Friday 19 May 2017

Manton, Rushden, Northamptonshire (1961)

Britain's second water tower to utilise prestressed reinforced concrete! Pre-stressed concrete was first used in this country for water tower construction back in 1953, for the small Meare tower in Somerset, which we featured here in February, 2009. Like the earlier tower, the Manton tower completed some eight years later, again only uses pre-stressed concrete for the tank, that has a capacity of 300,000 gallons. It's supporting cylindrical service shaft is of regular reinforced concrete. The tower was built for the Higham Ferrers & Rushden Water Board and can be seen under construction in the image on the right, reproduced with the kind permission of The Concrete Society.

The tower is located at SP 94130 66637 and the above image was the only full tower shot I could get, unlike this rather beter photograph, where the photographer looks to have had access to a neighbouring property.

Ferrers