Croydon Water Tower Blog

Croydon's water tower has its own twitter page!

It's very funny. This is another example of the symbolic power of a water tower in a community. (That comment has been noticed by Croydon's local paper).

Explanatory story here.

Link to the tower's official history here. Piemaster's comment below points out that the official history is completely wrong. He thinks they've got the information for the reservoir, not the tower. Yep, just goes to show. You've got to check everything, even the official sources.

When it was built it had a viewing platform at the top. It appears that now the tank and internals have been removed. Pity, although that means you could probably do a load of neat things with it now.

The twitter blog tells us the tower is very lonely. Well, maybe it will have some more friends soon.


Image from flickr

Andrew Motion: The Water Tower

The Water Tower

• Andrew Motion
• The Guardian,
• Saturday July 22 2000

If a drilling rig clanked inland
and made a stand
in some corner of a barley field -

its elephant legs

and pendulous cable-guts
cleaned up and bleached and thinned

by the massage of a summer wind

to four stocky struts,
its platform also stripped

to a whitewashed cell

with eyes turned everywhere at once -
if such a thing were possible

or worth imagining,
this water tower would be the best result.
Or maybe it dropped in from outer space.

Or then again maybe
its white and height are really like
a lighthouse that the sea

shrank back from then forgot.

That doesn't matter any more.
What does is how,

some forty years ago and recently

arrived to settle hereabouts,

I made this tower the furthest

fixed point of a walk

and stood where I am now,
four-square inside the circle

of its influence, and thought

these fields of silver-whiskered barley,

dog-rose hedges, gravel lanes

ash- and beech-tree spinnies

where the roe-deer live their secret lives,

would never seem so nearly

elements which made a grand design

if not for this: incomprehensible

and silent at the heart of things.

Except the silence broke.

It's over there! that's what I heard -

a joke against the ear

as if a bird had spoken, or the air

rubbed hard enough against itself

to squeak - a joke

I put to rest by saying carefully:

there must be men at work

inside the tower. It's over there!

The same words tumbled down again,

by which I understood I must be due

for home,

so barely heard them as I made my way

along those gravel lanes.

These gravel lanes, I mean -

the same today as then, although

I'm killing time in just a visit now,

not life at home

and what was over there

I reached and passed

and moved away from years ago,

and still can't see - as like the wind

parading through the barley

while I leave the shadow of the tower

and finish here

as anything: a single cat's paw

dabbing gingerly one minute,

then a solid blow

which batters down the heads so far

I think they won't recover.

• Commissioned by the BBC as part of Poetry Proms, a new series broadcast on Radio 3 during the interval of every Wednesday's Prom.

Andrew Motion photo © Antonio Olmos

L G Mouchel

Perhaps the most important and influential figure in water towers (and in Civil Engineering in general) was the incredibly prolific Louis Gustave Mouchel.

Both Gawthorpe and Newton le Willows were built by his firm after he introduced 'ferro-concrete' to Britain. This was one of the most influential and far-reaching inventions to shape 20th century civil engineering.

The engineering timelines website has a special feature on his life and work.

Incredible to think he did what he did in just eleven years before dying of stomach cancer at 56.

Gawthorpe

Gawthorpe Water Tower dominates the skyline and can be seen for miles around. It is located at the highest point of the Ossett-cum-Gawthorpe area, mid-way along Chidswell Lane in Gawthorpe. This huge concrete structure was constructed between 1922 and 1928 to store drinking water for the town, which was pumped from the Pildacre Water Works some 1.25 miles away. The 25-foot trough has a capacity of 200,000 gallons or nearly 1 million litres. The pinnacle of the tower is now also used to accommodate colinear mobile telephone aerials and they can be clearly seen in the picture. Read more here...

.... and a detailed history of the water suppy is here.

Decisions, Decisions: Greenham Common Tower for Sale

It's been a while since BWTAS heard from the architect Stephen Luxford. When Southern Water unloaded a portfolio of properties in 2004, he purchased at auction the Braithwaite water tower at the former Greenham Common airbase and then got planning permission to convert it into a house (first picture). That was a bit of a shock to the local council as they expected buyers would cut it up for scrap and put a traditional house on the plot.

(BWTAS members report that the rising price of scrap metal has hastened the demise of several old Braithwaite towers in Norfolk very recently.)

When Stephen contacted BWTAS, we were very pleased to be able to provide him with evidence of several similar tower conversions and we like to think that this eased his planning application or at least put his mind to rest that it wasn't such an impossible dream. There's nothing new in converting a Braithwaite water tower to become a house. This was done with the 'House in the Clouds' at Thorpeness in 1923 (very last picture below).

Stephen's orginal design created modules that were inserted through the beams, rather like the solution done with the Mouchel concrete tower at Ashford, as seen on Channel 4's Grand Designs (second from last below).

Stephen now reports that he has "now got planning permission for a slightly altered scheme which (you may see as unfortunate!) that clads the existing steel structure. I have however used the new cladding module to relate to the original Braithwaite system and windows to the lower parts punch between the existing cross bracing structure. The original scheme still has consent but it was proving a tricky construction route thus the revised scheme. Due to my own workload I have recently put the tower on the market for sale (with detailed planning consent) – so if one of your members fancies owning and converting their very own tower - let me know! Offers in the region of £100k at this stage. A build cost estimate is tricky because of unusual nature of the build but at £1200 to £1500/m.sq (quite a high rate). it would be in the region of £160k to £200k."











So it's now up to the client; expose the supports or clad them?

There's also another architectural treatment such a tower could have.














The site is listed with Buildstore www.buildstore.co.uk You have to be a member to view details though as it’s a website aimed at self-builder. There is a pack of information with drawings etc. that Stephen can send if people want to make contact directly.

stephen.luxford@luxfordarchitects.co.uk

Luxford Architects Limited

28 Lugard Road

London

SE15 2TD

T 020 7732 3718

M 0771 498 1978

Drew Leshko

...is an American sculptor who interprets the work of photographers and makes models of their subjects and rephotographs them. He was inspired by Bernd and Hilla Becher to produce a series of water tower images. We want!

Broadstone Water Tower

Another informative local history site:

The history of Broadstone Water Tower is rooted in the latter half of the 19th century, indeed it formed an essential part of the then embryonic public supply to the wider conurbation of developing Poole. A brief résumé of the early history of Poole's public water supply is useful when considering the demands that brought about construction of the tower....

Stanton on the Wolds

It's quite rare to find a comprehensive history of a now demolished water tower so we are grateful to Stanton on the Wolds Parish Council for providing all the detail about their erstwhile concrete water tower that lasted from1933 to 1985.

Something for children

It seems that it is no longer on the original site but here is a drawing of a water tower that you can download (click on image) and colour in. There at lots of others at edupics.com




It looks a lot like a continental tower, something like you can find at Kevelaer in Germany which coincidentally is twinned with Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.












Here's some that were coloured in by visitors to the water tower art show.

The 1881 Metal Water Tower of Shanghai

Text collated from various sources.

Up to the late 19th Century the principal source of water supply in Shanghai had been the Whangpoo River or the Suzhou Creek. The water from wells was brackish and unfit for drinking purposes, and the water carried from river or creek in buckets to the various houses was muddy and subject to contamination from sewers or refuse. It was poured into large kongs or jars and settled by the use of alum. Then it was boiled, but even so there was considerable danger connected with using it for drinking purposes. Probably it was the cause, in many cases, of typhoid fever and cholera.



The first proposal for the introduction of a system of waterworks was brought forward at an early date by Dr. M. T. Yates, but largely owing to financial reasons it received no support. The subject was repeatedly discussed but nothing definite was done about it until 1880. The Shanghai Municipal Council then entered into terms with a venture capital consortium (its records of interests in tea plantations and US mines have been located) known as Drysdale, Ringer and Co. and the work of laying pipes was begun. A water tower was erected in Kiangse Road and the pumping of water began in April, 1883. The Viceroy, Li Hung-chang, who happened to be on a visit to Shanghai, accepted an invitation to take part in the ceremony of turning on the water.

It is not recorded where the tower's metal components were founded but in Japan the Kamaishi Iron Works had just been opened in 1880. It is just as possible that they were made in the UK as water towers of this size in wrought iron were starting to appear there and the water company's financiers were based in Britain. Records indicate several British conglomerates bid for the building of the water works, the pipe laying and sewer contracts and other ancillary construction.

Given its size, it was a remarkable example of a prefabricated wrought iron structure. This technology was developed for the rapid building of water towers and related structures needed for railways and was proven with the cast sections to produce the twin water towers for the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. The engineer/architect was John William Hart, M Inst C E who later settled at and greatly developed Kobe, Japan.

The tower was also remarkable for being some of the first usage of reinforced concrete in China where the foundations were set in a concrete plinth costing £4371 or £1 per square foot. After Hart gave a paper at conference about the project there was criticism that the usual iron pilings would have been cheaper but Hart said this was necessitated by the stratum of soft alluvial deposits about 20 feet below the surface which had led to the collapse of a new screw-piled bridge in Shanghai "before a passenger had set foot on it".


A year later the system was extended so as to meet the needs of the Chinese. The object was not philanthropic but based on the ground that disease among the Chinese might spread to the foreign community, and that better native health meant greater safety for the whole population.

Waterworks and other public health initiatives were an avenue the British used to consolidate and expand their power in colonial outposts. General A. De C. Scott addressed the Institute of Civil Engineers when Hart presented his paper with the remarks that "to his mind it was the engineer who stood the best chance of breaking through the crust of prejudice, distrust, and dislike which still formed a barrier to intercourse with Europeans (by the Chinese)".

At first there was no great eagerness on the part of the Chinese to avail themselves of this new source of supply. Their reluctance was due not only to there being a small tax on those who used the water, but to prejudice founded on ignorance. There were rumours that the water was poisonous, or spoiled by lightning, or that people had been drowned in the water tower, and the Mixed Court Magistrate was obliged to issue a reassuring proclamation.

In the beginning there were complaints that the company overcharged for its supply, and this caused dissatisfaction. Although in 1888 it was proposed that the Council should buy out the company, and take the matter of water supply into its own hands, as is generally the case in other cities of the size of Shanghai, it was found to be too expensive a project.



The waterworks have remained a private company known as the Shanghai Waterworks Company up to the present day, although negotiations have recently been completed for bringing the company under the control of the Municipality.

The waterworks were of great value not only for the health of the community but also in increasing the facilities for extinguishing fires, the firemen previously being dependent entirely on the fire wells sunk in various localities.

It appears from the photographs and plans that there was a viewing gallery around the outside of the tank accessed by the spiral staircase. It must have given excellent views over the city. It is said it dominated the skyline for years and was one of Shanghai's earliest skyscrapers. In 1887 the water tower was festooned with multicolored electric lights in celebration of Queen Victoria's Jubilee.

It could have still been a landmark during the childhood of J. G. Ballard as it seems to be marked on the 1928 map of Shanghai but a contemporary photo of it today hasn't yet been located to confirm it still stands. Google Earth indicates it must be a victim of redevelopment.

The Shanghai Water Tower with the water main pipes leading over the Suzhou creek. Erected 1881. Height 130 feet, contents one hundred seventy thousand gallons. Tank diameter 50' depth 12'3". Weight of water 670 tons. Cost of materials and construction £11,849. The makers proudly reported to the 'Civil Engineer' that it had withstood several typhoons and apart from the cost of painting, the maintenance cost was "entirely nil".

Further reading:

A Wilderness of Marshes: The Origins of Public Health in Shanghai By Kerrie L. MacPherson.

John William Hart's 1890 report with plates of the building of the waterworks and tower is deposited at the ICE and is available online with an Athens log in or payment of 24 USD.

Plans image from The Water Supply of Towns and the Construction of Waterworks by William Kinninmond Burton, a Scot who in 1877 was invited by the Meiji Government of Japan to become the first Professor of Sanitary Engineering and lecturer in Rivers, Docks and Harbours at the Imperial University of Tokyo. Read more about his amazing life here.