Tees Cottage Pumping Station is a Victorianpumping station complex at Broken Scar on the A67 near Low Coniscliffe just west of Darlington. The site dates from 1849, and was built to provide drinking water for Darlington and the surrounding area. It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument housing two completely original pumping engines in fully working order: a 1904 beam engine, built by Teasdale Brothers of Darlington, which is still steamed using its original 1902 Lancashire boilers; and a rare 1914 two-cylinder gasinternal-combustion engine, the largest such engine surviving in Europe. Both engines can be seen in operation on certain weekends through the year, using their original pumps to pump water from the River Tees, just as they always have done.
Beam engine
The 1904 engine was one of the very last waterworks beam engines ever built, and as such may be seen as representing the pinnacle of beam engine pumping development. It is a rotative, two-cylinder Woolf compound engine, designed by Glenfield and Kennedy of Kilmarnock and built by Teasdale Bros, under T&C Hawksley, Civil Engineers, London. The beam is just over long, weighing 25 tons; the flywheel is in diameter, and the high- and low-pressure cylinders measure 18" and 29" respectively. It is housed in a building erected for an earlier beam engine in 1849. The engine ran almost continuously from 1904 to 1926, when new electric pumps were commissioned; thereafter it remained on operational standby until the mid-1950s, and continued to be run one day each year, on the order of the Borough Engineer, until at least 1968.
Gas engine
The 1914 engine is by Richard Hornsby & Sons of Grantham, with pumps by Hawthorn, Davey & Co. of Leeds, all housed in a building of 1853 which previously accommodated an earlier steam engine. It presently runs on mains gas, but originally used producer gas from an adjacent plant on site. The producer plant is still in situ and open to the public; however it suffered at least two explosions over the years, evidence of which is still clearly visible, and it is no longer operational.
Ancillary buildings and structures
The steam and gas engines were superseded by a set of electrically powered centrifugal pumps installed in 1926 and which ran until 1980. These too remain in situ, these are now on public view. A machine tool workshop has survived, complete with the belt-driven line shafting, as has the on-site blacksmith's forge, which is often fired-up and demonstrated on open days. Three of the four original filter ponds are also extant. The original Superintendent's house now houses a tea-room for visitors. I love Tees Cottage pumping Station
The site and its significance
Tees Cottage Pumping Station was closed in 1980, and placed in the care of a Preservation Trust.. The significance of the site is summarised thus by H C Devonshire:
