Houghton Hall Water Tower Visit

BWTAS is planning to visit Houghton Hall in Norfolk, site of Britain’s finest domestic water tower dating from the late 1720’s and only taken out of use recently. It’s a beautiful Palladian structure sited at a focal point of a magnificent garden vista. According to Barry Barton “enough remains of the original system to make Houghton Hall’s water supply – and its water tower – of considerable historical significance”. This is an open event. We plan to rendezvous at the car park at 12.15 where we'll meet a curator who will walk us over to the tower and show us inside.

The house is the former home of Robert Walpole and is open to the public and has a restaurant and gift shop. The house opens to the public at 1.15 pm. There are two types of entry fee to Houghton: inclusive of the house £8, all except the house £5.

Please contact Wil Harvey at harveys@care4free.net and let him know you if plan to be there.

12.15

Sunday 6^th July 2008

Houghton Hall,

King's Lynn,

Norfolk

PE31 6UE

About BWTAS

The British Water Tower Appreciation Society exists to connect enthusiasts of water towers to share their enjoyment of their artistic, cultural, architectural, historical, social and engineering significance. 

We are a society that tries not to burden ourselves with administration, committees and all that stuff (although we have them). BWTAS is whatever the members can make of it themselves.

PURPOSE

The society is a forum for the exchange of information and it supports members in recording their local water towers and researching into their history. It hopes to share that work through the pages of this blog. It has established reciprocal links with other bodies such as the Folly Fellowship and the DeutschWasserturm Gesellschaft. Internationale.

WHAT IT DOES

So far BWTAS has staged exhibitions of water tower art and crafts, given talks, organised tours, manned exhibition stands, written guidebooks on water towers, been on radio and TV to tell people about water towers and it hopes that you can help it to do more. Amongst its members are architects, artists, historians, civil engineers, utility company employees and tower owners as well as 'just plain folk'.

The society welcomes enquiries from tower owners, researchers, historians, architects, students and so forth looking for information on water towers and it knows of experts and resources it can direct them too. We also have members prepared to give presentations to interested groups.

ETHOS

BWTAS is non-political (such as taking a position on phone mast issues) and is not preservationist but examples all over the world show that water towers of any size and material can have commercial and social benefits by their preservation. Many redundant water towers in Britain have been put to imaginative reuse. 

Too often these structures are claimed to have "no historical or architectural merit" because their documented history isn't available or hasn't been preserved. BWTAS encourages the open exchange of information so that decisions on these matters can be taken properly.

The security of the public water supply once made it necessary to keep information on water towers out of the public domain but the privatisation of the public water companies unfortunately caused the loss of important archives before that restriction was no longer required. Much of the history of British water tower engineers, architects and builders who led the world in this technology has been lost but many members are trying to secure what remains.

BWTAS encourages the responsible enjoyment of water towers which it thinks is best done from a distance. Both disused and working water towers have numerous dangers to the unprepared. Besides risks of death by falling (which we see too many reports of) even the base of a working tower can have unstable masonry or fixtures, disease carrying vermin, open pits filled with deep sludge, asbestos, live wiring and a host of other hazards. If you like to explore towers please stay away from going into them without permission, it annoys their owners. You can join BWTAS and help us organise safe access for study and public tours instead.

JOINING

Membership is £5 for adults and £1 for aged 16 and under. Since the founding in 2006, BWTAS has not had to ask the members for renewals but will reserve the right to do so.

To apply, send your contact information and no smaller than a letter (DL) size SAE with 1st or 2nd class postage for 30g and £5 or £1 made out to BWTAS to

Membership
BWTAS
Green Gables, The Street, Wenhaston, Suffolk IP19 9DP

Tel: 01502 478606
email bwtas@hotmail.co.uk
For family or group membership, send extra SAEs with 1st or 2nd postage for 30g.

Enquiries on any topic are best addressed in a letter (snail mail) to this address as not all the committee or our membership and numerous contacts have email.

MEETINGS

Meetings are held whenever people want to get together to talk about towers and make plans to promote their appreciation. Dates will be posted on this blog.

HOW BWTAS STARTED


In 2002 photographer Nat Bocking had the idea of writing what became 'A guide to the water towers of East Anglia' because he had been photographing water towers for local landscape studies but he could not find any information about who built them and why.

Seeing a gap in a market, he spent far too much time and a great deal of his money on travelling and research but he finally found a source of funds to pay for 2200 copies of his free guide to be printed. 

He enlisted the help of graphic designer Paul Welch and by September 2005 it was ready and in a few short months all the copies given to museums and TICs in Suffolk and Norfolk were greedily snapped up. The Institution of Civil Engineers now offers a scanned copy.

The guide then led to Nat's appearance on local TV and radio which was seen by retired teacher Brian Light who was preparing a water tower history of 'Jumbo' the water tower in Colchester. In Wenhaston artist friends Wil Harvey and Andy Norris, who had been painting water towers for years, realised that Nat lived only a mile away. Eventually so many people interested in water towers got in touch with each other that it was decided to form a society. In May 2006 the British Water Tower Appreciation Society was formed at the Star Inn, Wenhaston.