Iconic Bracebridge Heath water tower to be demolished

from Lincolnshire Echo:

Landmark water tower to make way for £40 million Bracebridge Heath development

LANDMARK: The water tower at St John's in Bracebridge Heath.

A landmark water tower will be removed from a village near Lincoln as work on the first phase of a £40 million housing development nears completion.

The iconic 90-year-old tower is in the grounds of the derelict St John's Hospital site at Bracebridge Heath.

And it will disappear later this month as developers transform the former Victorian mental asylum into St John's Village.

Phase one of the 183 luxury homes and apartments, including 77 new-build family homes, in the spacious grounds of the 18-acre site will be completed in August.

And Bracebridge Heath Parish Council chairman John Kilcoyne said the demise of the tower was inevitable.

And it is set to be demolished over the weekend of Saturday and Sunday, July 12 and 13.

"The parish council accepted that the water tower would not survive the development of the hospital buildings into apartments and houses," Mr Kilcoyne said.

"While we would have liked to keep the tower as a landmark, we realised it was not suitable for a residential development.

"It is also not original to the hospital design, being built in the 1920s, and is not in a good condition.

"The concrete would not last indefinitely, and it was felt better to take it down at this point.

"North Kesteven District Council accepted this when planning permission was granted."

Read the rest of the story http://www.lincolnshireecho.co.uk/

What the parish council and the developers haven't said is this tower is a fine example of early reinforced concrete water tower construction, demonstrating with its lightweight form the huge potential of this then new material and the confidence that civil engineers were beginning to have in it. Barton considers the Bracebridge tower "combines a remarkable slenderness with elegance of form..." p73 The Water Towers of Britain

When innovative materials and techniques become available, no civil engineer wants to 'push the envelope' too far but with Bracebridge, Barton asserts that water towers of the 1920's started to have a  "certain resonance with the spirit of the age and gave rise to a number of remarkably bold reinforced concrete structures... which it is doubtful would have been built at a later date".

Built circa 1924, the tower is 125 feet tall with footings remarkably only five feet deep.

The 22ft 8in diameter tank holds 30,000 gallons and is supported on six slightly splayed legs spreading to a diameter of only 23 feet at the base.

http://www.ukurbex.co.uk/

According to English Heritage (who reference Barton) the tower was built by Charles Horobin of the Indented Bar and Concrete Engineering Company but it did not meet the criteria for listed status as the attendant laundry had been previously demolished.

Ahh, that's Bass! Relief as development permission granted for Sleaford Maltings

BWTAS member David Blackburn reports:

Planning permission was granted yesterday for a major redevelopment that should secure the future intact of the former Bass Maltings site at Sleaford, Lincolnshire.

This massive 13 acre listed Grade 2* complex comprises many brick buildings rising up six storeys There is a fine water tower almost hidden within. Last used as a poultry factory, but derelict for many years, it's over 50 years since it last produced malt for the brewing industry. There have been several failed restoration and redevelopment schemes and the site has decayed badly but it now looks as though the complex has a future. A new scheme by developer Gladedale proposes shops, office space and 220 houses and apartments . Hopefully there will be a restored - and accessible - water tower as a centrepiece.


According to the BBC, North Kesteven District Council said it hoped the project would create 500 jobs and bring millions in investment.English Heritage had classified the Maltings as the largest at risk building in England. 


The organisation worked with the developer to protect as much of the original structure as possible. Simon Cocks from developer Gladedale Estates said: "We are not altering the external elevations at all. "There will be some internal demolitions but that is mostly taking down the fire damaged sections." The council's Economic Development Manager, Alan Gray, emphasised the importance of the project. "The Maltings scheme is an integral part of the wider Sleaford South East Regeneration project which has schemes which, when taken together, represent the biggest and most economically-significant commercial investments Sleaford has seen since the opening of the Navigation more than 200 years ago."

It is expected work will get under way in the autumn.

A commendable amount of detail of the proposals and history is at the developer's website which says:

The former Bass Maltings were completed in 1907 and were in use for their original purpose until 1959. Ten years later, the first fire occurred and then the Site was purchased by G W Padley for chicken rearing and vegetable
processing and freezing. There was a serious fire in 1976 and, in 1982,
Padley’s applied for consent to demolish all of the buildings. Their application
was refused and their subsequent appeal was rejected and the listing of the
buildings was upgraded to II*. In the 1990s, poultry farming ceased due to
health and safety reasons. There was a third fire in 1999 and in 2006 the
Site was purchased by Gladedale, the current developers.

The fact that so much of the buildings stand intact is testimony to the high
standard of the original build. The total fire-damaged area amounts to
approximately 25% of the total built space. The extent of damage is uneven
across the Site and five of the nine blocks remain undamaged by fire. Most of
the buildings have been altered to some extent, whether through fire
damage or physical change relating to later uses. The Site has been subject
to some vandalism and the upper parts of the buildings suffer from pigeon
infestation. Apart from the fire-damaged areas, the buildings are generally in good condition. The brickwork is mostly sound as are the floors, except in the kilns where they are missing. Roof structures are generally intact were away from the fire-damaged areas. Some fixed machinery remains in situ but almost all moveable machinery has been removed. Blocks 1 and 2 retain the most complete collection of surviving machinery and equipment.

Westgate Water Tower, Lincoln

There is a very detailed entry on Wikipedia about Lincoln's superb Westgate Water Tower built after a tragic typhoid outbreak between November 1904 and April 1905 when 1006 people in Lincoln contracted typhoid and 113 died.

Due to its design, the Westgate has a rather unusual cleaning method. A cleaning team is lowered into the tower in a dinghy and cleans the tank from top to bottom.