Towers of East Anglia Art Exhibition

The Landguard Fort and warm evening sunshine welcomed over sixty people to a private view of the BWTAS sponsored exhibition; Towers of East Anglia.

BWTAS Chairman Wil Harvey (far left) gave our thanks to David Morgan (second from left) and the Landguard Fort Trust for their assistance with the show.

Wil welcomed our distinguished guests; Felixstowe's Mayor Councillor Angela Goodwin and her husband Councillor John Goodwin.

















Left: Pastels and photographs of New York City water towers by guest artist Dorothy Koppellman, who has studied water towers in her native USA for nearly 30 years.

Towers, with their visual impact, always inspire feelings of awe and curiosity.





The exhibition shows over 90 works by twenty artists with a common interest in depicting architecture.

Artists exhibiting include Clare Johnson, Mark Beesley, Joan Sandford-Cook, Sandra Rowney, John Barham, Charles Nightingale, Alan Wright, Dorin Elvin, Elle Thompson, Kate Coleman, Michael Norman, Liz Klotz and others.

Most of the works are available for purchase.

Right: An installation by Alfie Sheppard, a recent graduate of Norwich University College of the Arts.

Alfie has lately secured a six month internship with an American sculpture studio.








A wide range of BWTAS merchandise is for sale.











A full catalogue will appear online in due course. Meantime, the exhibition runs until Sunday July 19, 2009.

More Info

BWTAS profiled in Current Archaeology

BWTAS is very grateful to Chris Catling news editor of Current Archaeology magazine for his page length profile of the society in issue 233 under 'Odd Socs'.

One of our committee is a regular reader of the UK's best selling archaeology magazine and so it was a pleasant surprise to see BWTAS profiled without any prior knowledge.

It's useful to see how we present ourselves reflected in the media and we appreciate the publicity this brings. We're proud to be placed in the company of the "least known and most dedicated" of societies.

This PR break comes after the recent regret that after their enquiry we had to inform Hat Trick, the producers of Have I Got News for You, that we didn't publish our newsletter on paper anymore for them to feature in their television programme.

The respective issue won't be available online for several months. To get your copy please ask your newsagent or go to www.archaeology.co.uk

Glimpse of a Gilded Age

Washington Post - United States

Once home to a rebel of the du Pont family,
Nemours Mansion and Gardens in Wilmington,
Delaware has reopened after a three-year
renovation including this 8o foot water tower.

Click Here for Slide Show

Going for a Burton

A disused concrete water tower at Burton Green in Warwickshire is for sale as freehold by auction on July 1, 2009

If you fancy bidding on this one-of-a-kind property contact mat.harris@kingsturge.com or jason.birch@kingsturge.com.

Details from Coventry Telegraph

Water tower for sale

Severn Trent Water is disposing of 420 properties over the next 18 months including a water tower next to Manor Cottage in Pebworth, Worcestershire at an auction on July 1 in London.

Selling agent Jason Birch from Kings Sturge Savills (Nottingham), expects the land to go for around £20,000 to £25,000.

He said: “It is big enough for a detached house to go on, but that depends on planning permission.”

BWTAS are waiting for more details and will put them here when we have them.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/l3wcm8

Savills
9 Fletcher Gate
Nottingham
NG1 1QQ
Tel: +44 (0)115 934 8000
Fax: +44 (0)115 934 8001/002
Email: nottingham@savills.com

Water tower turned into veterans' memorial

It seems appropriate on the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings to bring you this story:

Retired US Marine Howard Flexor moved to Dudley, Massachusetts USA two years ago. He settled in a beautiful home with a great view reaching as far as Connecticut. The only problem was the house sat directly across the street from the town's water tower (actually just a raised storage tank as far as we can tell, Ed.)

Howard, a Vietnam veteran, went to the Dudley Water Department and asked their permission to paint a special message on the tower out of his own pocket.

He says he wanted to make sure that veterans were not forgotten. The town agreed because it was a free paint job for the tank which would cost then $3000 otherwise and you can't argue against a case of Dudley Do-right (sorry).

We only wonder, with such a big canvas, why only paint a tiny part of it? We would guess his budget couldn't stretch to employing Hennig Mural Design who specialise in disguising or enhancing metal storage tanks with clever murals. Can we bring this firm to Buncefield?

NECN.COM Video Story

Foredown Tower Centenary Open Day

If you've been to the Sussex Downs, you may have seen the Foredown Tower Countryside Centre which is England's only water tower-based Camera Obscura. The water tower is 100 years old this year and on August 15th, 2009 it will be open free to the public to celebrate.

Camera Obscura are popular vistor attractions and redundant water towers are ideal for conversion into them. This is one idea BWTAS suggests to tower owners looking to repurpose theirs commercially. Many of our members consider Colchester's 'Jumbo' would be ideal for this but that's another story.

Hove Civic Society website informs us the tower was built in 1909 by J. Parsons & Sons with a 27,500 gallon tank made by Every’s of Lewes. The immense weight of the water and tank was supported by brick walls which are up to 33 inches thick in places. The original ballcock and water depth gauge have been preserved along with lots of the massive pipes that served the tower nearly one hundred years ago. After financial help from Brighton-based American Express and much deliberating, the tower opened in 1991 as the home of one of England’s few operational camera obscuras. Windows and a pitched roof were added above the tank to facilitate the camera which is built into a tower at the very top. It projects a television-like image onto a dish at floor level and can be pointed in any direction from the sea to Worthing to the Devil’s Dyke to Eastbourne.

Delta Force

It may be only 50,000 gallons and made of rusted metal but it has an unusual double tank design. The 1904 Rio Vista water tower on the California Delta (near Sacremento, USA) is a such a well known landmark to river traffic that it has just been dimantled to become the centrepiece of a new development.

The SF Chronicle reports "city leaders hope a new 'Discover the Delta' center will draw visitors, jolt the local economy and brand the delta as a unique California destination on par with the redwoods, mountains and coast.

The nonprofit center will include a model of the delta, a wine tasting room, farmers' market, classrooms and a museum showcasing the agricultural and cultural history of the region. Organizers hope to break ground on the $5 million project this summer and open to the public by next year."

People from the Rio Vista community turned out in their hundreds to see the workers dismantle them 135 foot tower which will be restored before being moved to its new home across the river. The event was also opportunity for local schools and community groups to get involved creating exhibits celebrating the tower's iconic status.

Officially called the Dutra tower these days, the tower had previously been owned by the Rio Vista Canning and Packing Company, Del Monte (known in the UK for tinned fruit cocktail) and then Blackwelder Manufacturing. The agricultural purpose of the tower explains its double tank design; the lower tank was for drinking water, the upper tank powered a flume that transported asparagus for processing and packing. Ninety percent of the world's canned asparagus, mostly white asparagus, was packed here. In the mid-sixties, the tower began to show its age and sprang leaks and was taken out of service.

The Dutra company donated the tower to the project. We couldn't agree more with their choice for an eye-catching iconic landmark than a water tower.

Read the story from the San Francisco Chronicle

Read about the tower and the project with slideshow

The Benacre Water Tower Family

A few weels ago Cilla Gosnell contacted BWTAS asking for information about the WT on the Benacre estate in Suffolk (close to the BWTAS HQ) because she believed her grandfather had worked there and lived in the tower with his family. We sent her the information we had and she has been kind enough to report the fascinating results of her research. If anyone has anything to add, comments via the form would be very much appreciated.

Two weeks ago I was on a cycling holiday based at Wattisham in Suffolk, but decided to 'take a day off' and go by car to Benacre to see if I could find the water tower as I'm rarely in that part of the world. I didn't contact you - or the Benacre Hall owners - beforehand, being unsure which day would be most convenient for me, but did take a print-out of your e-mail to establish my credentials just in case I was challenged by anyone in authority!

From your website, I was able to pinpoint the position of the tower on the OS map. Approaching on foot from the northern end of the park - and prepared to find no access at all - we were pleasantly surprised to find permissive paths, indistinct on the ground but leading in roughly the right direction until we suddenly spotted the tower looming among the trees. For me it was a somewhat weird experience as I don't think anyone in my family had ventured there for nearly a century and the parkland - and lodge buildings we'd passed - were totally deserted. The location of the tower seemed very remote but presumably there would have been better - or more-used - access at one time and I'm pretty certain there was a 'cottage garden' where nettles and brambles are now.

Returning home after my holiday, I found the old photograph of my grandmother Catherine Hughes (who died years before I was born) with my father Selwyn and uncle Kenric outside the tower in about 1907 and another of my grandfather (photographed - I think - before he was employed at Benacre although the caption says 1909).

Hughes family at Benacre Hall Water Tower, 1906 – 1910

During the time that my grandfather George Hughes was employed by the Benacre Hall estate – about a hundred years ago – the family lived in the water tower.

I believe that my grandfather worked on electrical installations and/or pumping machinery; previously he’d been employed for some years at Trentham Park, Staffordshire and at The Lee Manor estate in Bucks, from where the family moved to Benacre in 1906 or 1907. As the date in the tower brickwork is 1902, it would have been a very new building at the time.

The picture of him is the only one we possess but I don’t think it was taken while he worked at Benacre. I guess he was born in the 1860s (as my father’s older sister was born in 1891) so would have been in his 40s when he was at Benacre.


Correspondence at the time was addressed to my grandparents at ‘The Tower’ so I presume there was living accommodation there. I had once supposed this might have been in an attached building rather than in the tower itself but a recent visit to the tower (May 2009) showed no trace in the brickwork of there ever having been any adjoining building.

The photograph of my grandmother, Catherine Hughes, with her two little boys – the older one, Selwyn (my father) and his younger brother (my Uncle Ken) – shows part of the tower and the windows at first-floor level appear to be open as though the building is ‘lived-in’. It looks as though the middle section would have had room to accommodate a family with the water tank above and the machinery below. However I know nothing about the internal layout of water towers, but would be very interested to know how it was arranged. There’s no sign of any chimney, but Google Earth shows some unidentified details in the roof, which might have included a vent of some sort.

The sheer bulk of the tower amazed me, especially as I’d been told of the occasion in family folklore when my uncle (aged 3 or 4?) had managed to climb up it and ‘walk round the top’ – presumably on the ledge just below the top. I wondered whether there would once have been metal ladders/staircase outside allowing access, or maybe there was a way up from inside the building. Onlookers were apparently horrified but – wisely – didn’t call out for fear of startling the child, who made his way safely down.

(Some towers of this size had living accomodation or offices placed between the pump room and the tank, as in the Southwold WT, but living in a water tower could be both noisy from the pumps and damp from the condensation from the tank. To utilise 'waste' heat from the pumps; it could be vented through the tank to prevent the water freezing. Access to the roof and tank would be typically inside the tower, usually through the center of the tank that was arranged in a ring - Ed. )

Really we know very little about the family at this stage of their lives. My father, who was born in 1903, started school at Wrentham: we have a photograph of him on his first day there. George Hughes was a keen photographer and did his own processing. It’s also thought that he did some decorative wood carving for Benacre Hall. He was quite an accomplished oil-painter though I think his pictures were mostly copies. My father told me of an incident when his mother – in a rage – had kicked at one of her husband’s paintings tearing the canvas. We had that picture in our living room when I was a child. Learning – recently – that there was a fine collection of original paintings at Benacre Hall, I wondered if that was a source of inspiration.

Anyway life at Benacre seemed to come to an abrupt end around 1910 when my grandfather left his family and went to New Zealand. I don’t know whether his work at Benacre was completed or exactly why he left. It’s been hinted that he’d been involved with a young woman, perhaps somebody employed at Benacre Hall. However letters that he subsequently sent from NZ to his young sons suggest that he’d gone there alone and hoped his family would follow but they didn’t and returned to The Lee, Bucks. I believe (from what little I was told) that he was possibly a heavy drinker and left debts behind him. I’m inclined to think he went to NZ seeking both escape and better-paid work but don’t know if he ever sent money home. Consequently he was regarded as the ‘black sheep of the family’ and it seemed to my brother and me and my cousin that there was a conspiracy of silence about him and questions were discouraged.

Now we are trying to fill in some of the gaps!

Cilla Gosnell (nee Hughes), May 2009

Hollymoor Hospital, Birmingham, West Midlands (1905)

Thankfully, this beautiful hospital tower still exists due to a change of use and it being grade II listed in November 1993.

The hospital was designed by William Martin & Martin and built by John Bowen & Sons of Birmingham for Birmingham Corporation as part of the City Lunatic Asylum. Most of Hollymoor hospital was completed by 1904, but the water tower was not completed until 1905. The hospital opened on the 16th of May 1905. The patients were relocated to Barnsley Hall Hospital during world war one, when it was used as a military hospital, to treat the wounded from France. The patients were returned in 1921. Hollymoor hospital closed in July 1994 and was mostly demolished in 1996.

The water tower now houses a dentist, a doctor's surgery and a pharmacy. It is located at O.S. Grid Ref. SP 00316 78498. Photograph by Andrew Clayton taken 26th June, 2005.