Living in the shadow of its more famous equestrian neighbour, Kempton Park Racecourse, the pumping station that bears the name is more than a match when it comes to talking horsepower. Alan Barnes charts the fall and rise of this magnificent testament to our heritage.

The Prince of Wales is beside himself, starting the barring engine.

AUntil the Metropolis Water Act of 1902 set up the Metropolitan Water Board, London had been supplied by eight different companies. The service they provided fell short of expectations and had been subject to a number of public inquiries and Royal Commissions. Under the chairmanship of Lord Llandaff, the final commission recommended the establishment of a joint board to take over the responsibilities of the various companies.

The environment is important too. The restored pavement outside the pumping station, viewed from the main line railway embankment.

One of these eight companies was the New River Company, whose assets included the works at Kempton Park that had been built to treat and pump water from the nearby Staines Reservoirs. The newly formed Metropolitan Water Board took over the pumping station at Kempton in 1905 and the five engines in the pump house continued to pump filtered water to treatment works around London for the next 20 years.

The second chimney being erected.

By the late 1920s, increasing demands for water for both domestic and industrial use led to the need for an additional pumping capacity. A new and visually impressive pump house covering 18,500 sq ft and costing £165,000 was built by William Moss & Sons Ltd in 1927. This was designed to house two three-cylinder, inverted triple expansion steam engines, along with the boilers and associated equipment. The original design for the engine layout was developed in the USA where Edward P Allis introduced it to a waterworks in 1886, although a similar design had been previously used for ship’s engines.

Kempton Park Pumping Station under construction in March 1927. Note the wooden scaffolding and temporary railway track.

The new triples were designed by the Metropolitan Water Board’s chief engineer, Henry Stilgoe, and built by Worthington Simpson Ltd of Newark-on-Trent at a cost of £94,000. And what engines they were, each weighing 800 tons and developing 1008hp, 62ft high, with crankshafts weighing 30 tons. These leviathans were truly awesome and were destined to pump London’s water until 1980, when they were finally replaced by modern electric motors, housed within the old 1905 pump house, where the original five smaller steam engines had been.
The technical specifications, while certainly impressive, somehow fail to convey the size and power of these huge machines that can only be truly appreciated when you are standing next to them in the engine house.

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