Ten Famous Belgians

There's a British pub-quiz perennial: name ten famous Belgians. Of course you lose a point if you name the fictional Hercule Poirot. What isn't fictional is that the tiny plucky country dispensed with government for over year and nobody revolted so evidently it is a very civilised place. It also has a wealth of water tower culture, something BWTAS posits is not unrelated.

Charleroi, Belgium 11/25/1990
Id: BW-6090-7-25.11.1990

Gallery of more Belgian industrial water towers

Near Antwerp is a stunning converted water tower house designed by architect Jo Crepain of Crepain Binst Architecture. The Moereels House is located in Brasschaat.

Chateau d’eau is a remarkable home made from a reclaimed water tower in the small town of Steenokkerzeel. 

Read more: Water Tower Transformed Into Minimalist Modern Home.

The water tower below is in Tienen in the Flemish part of Belgium and is by Architect Ortwin Deroo. It's 46 meters high with a viewing platform.

There are many more on this excellent gallery of Belgian Water Towers.

However, Mrs Benjamin of Suffolk sent BWTAS this week an image taken on her Eurostar city break to Bruge. It's located at 51.080935,3.114796

Mrs Benjamin wrote: Deze is voor je – de watertoren van Tourhout.  De waterbedriif is Vlaamse Maatschappij voor Watervoorziening.

(This is for you, the water tower of Tourhout. The water company is VMW)

Interestingly, this tower doesn't appear in the previous galleries so it seems there must be plenty of water towers in Belgium left to document. Happy hunting!

With a lack of information about Tourhout water towers, the only notable thing we found about Tourhout is that it produced Sylvie De Caluwe. OK, we were kind of distracted from searching much further but we hope she will one day earn a place on a list of very famous Belgians.

Sylvie De Caluwé

Score a point if you said:

Audrey Hepburn
Eddy Merckx
Adolphe Sax
Herge (George Remi)
Plastic Bertrand
Peter Paul Rubens
Rene Magritte
Leo Baekeland
Liz Claiborne

That's only nine? Oh, poor Belgium but we British think your water towers are more than enough compensation.

Amlwch, Anglesea, Wales (1953)

image courtesy of David Blackburn

The third of a trio of idustrial water towers is this 100,000 gallon tower, built in 1953 as part of a bromine and dibromoethane production plant. The water tower stored fresh water for process work, from local sources. The tower comprises two concentric cylindrical tanks, of 33ft 6in and 23ft 8in diameter respectively, arranged around the 5ft in diameter service shaft that extends below the tank and provides its sole means of elevation. The plants was owned by “The Associated Ethyl Company Limited”. In 1961 the name changed to “The Associated Octel Company limited”. The factory closed in 2005 and has since been purchased by the American energy company “Canatxx” who have plans to convert it into a LNG terminal for gas brought by tanker from the Middle East. The water tower is located at SH 44502 93547.
Dibromoethane was very effective in preventing the build up of lead inside engines, when Tetraethyl lead is added to petrol to prevent pre-ignition. In the late 1990’s the Amlwch site was taken over by “Great Lakes Chemicals limited”. The site moved away from producing DBE for petrol into producing Bromine and Bromine intermediates for use in a wide range of consumer products such as Pharmaceuticals, Dyes, Flame retardant, agrochemicals and water purification systems.

Ferrers

Garrett’s, Leiston, Suffolk (c. 1850)

This water tower, we are told, was built in the 1850's to provide water for the various chemical treatments involved in the steam boiler manufacturing process on the Garrett Works. The first evidence of the water tower is an engraving of the Garrett works, circa 1860. The engine house immediately to the North of the tower and depicted on the engraving along with its large chimney, was demolished in 1914. The Works’ Well located beneath the tower (some 487ft deep), also provided water for the town until 1910, when another well was sunk on the outskirts of town. Frank Garrett’s house in Aldringham was supplied with water from the works by cast iron pipes, although Leiston had no mains water supply until 1914. The water tower was restored between November 2001 and March 2002 and now forms part of the Long Shop Museum. As part of the restoration project, a second internal tank was removed.

The water tower was Grade II listed on 2^nd August 1983 (IoE #401764). The water tower is located at TM 44407 62597.

Ferrers

Bowling Green Mills, Bingley, West Yorkshire (1871)

BWTAS member, David Blackburn, sent us the above photograph, of an industrial water tower, as we don’t feature many of these. To rectify this, I’ll post a trio of industrial towers this month. The first being this one at the UK headquarters of Damart, the thermal clothing manufacturer. "Bowling Green Mills", as it was called, was built in 1871 for the production of Worsted. From the image on Google Earth, looking down the Damart chimney, the tank appears to be open topped and no longer in use - originally it had a pitched roof. David said that "it looks as if the height of the tower has been raised once or twice" the different coloured brick work beneath the tank suggests this and an image of Bingley taken in 1894, confirms that the tank was at a lower level when compared to a 2009 picture taken from a similar angle. Between the tower and the fine chimney, is the engine house. A nice detail is the gable end that has a centrifugal "flyball" governor in relief. The chimney and engine house are Grade II listed (IoE #337966). The water tower is located at SE 10765 39410.

Ferrers