You always remember your first, or so they say, and these were my first water-powered water pumps.
They’re actually quite common and I’ve found many more since, but at the time I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking at.
But pumps aside, the main aim of the outing was to look at Edge Mill, an old water-powered corn mill hidden in a valley south of Chester.
Not much is known about this mill except that the current building dates from the 1600s, with later additions, and the machinery was removed in the early 1900s.
However heritage information tends to be decades out of date so you never know what to expect - the mill may be renovated and inhabited or just a pile of rubble.
This one turned out to be still standing, derelict and overgrown.
Pictures are a mixture of camera and phone from two visits, one in Dec 2019 and the other Jun 2021.
Approaching up the stream, the mill is centre right next to a little bridge, with a small outbuilding in the foreground on the left.
This outbuilding has little rooms with arched doorways at one end (pigsty?), then a room with a bread oven and a loo at the other end.
Front side of the mill. The wheel pit has now been filled in but the the waterwheel was on the left gable end.
Rear view with the overgrown water channel (leat) leading to the wheel on the right.
From the height of the leat it seems this was an overshot or breast-shot wheel.
Inside the mill where the grinding machinery would have been.
The hole where the axle of the wheel came through the wall, with a semicircular scrape from the large gear on the inside (pit wheel), and a horizontal scrape above from one of the horizontal gears (great spur).
A pair of iron wheel hubs can just be seen through the opening.
Some early-looking graffiti, maybe 1600s or 1700s.
No sign of any grinding stones upstairs - the framework below suggests there may have been two sets.
The rest of the building seems to have been last used as a house.
A view of the mill from the other side of the main stream.
I initially thought the pipe might be for a water turbine, but in fact it’s for a hydraulic ram pump - there’s a wikipedia entry for these if you are interested.
I couldn’t see a maker’s plate, but it looks like a Blake compound ram - there ought to be another bit with the waste valve buried under the mud.
Carrying on upstream through the now silted up mill pond we come to the object marked ‘pumping house’ on the map.
On the left below is what it looked like after a chunk of the ivy was removed in 2019 - a waterwheel of some sort missing its buckets and revolving in a narrow pit (right).
I came equipped with secateurs on the most recent visit, and did a bit of weeding and tidying up of fallen masonry to reveal the mechanism more clearly.
Various bits such as the connecting and piston rods are missing but you can now see how the wheel, which still spins, worked the reciprocating pump.
The output pipe from the pump emerges near the outfall from the wheel and heads up the side of the valley in the direction of a nearby farm.
Looking upstream there are two tanks on the left which I assume were for settling/filtering the stream water which was to be pumped.
The water to power the wheel seems to have been taken from the weir in the background by lengths of long piping one of which can be seen in the third picture below.
A bit of cement above the wheel with a pipe-sized indentation.
Finally, old maps show another two hydraulic ram pumps further upstream.
I had a look for these but could only find the remains of one in a bog - here’s the bog.
And here’s the flooded pit I almost fell into.
Hard to see from the photo, but there was no machinery under the water.
This is fairly typical when you start looking for rural hydraulics - the machinery has often gone, although you can usually see where it was.
They’re actually quite common and I’ve found many more since, but at the time I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking at.
But pumps aside, the main aim of the outing was to look at Edge Mill, an old water-powered corn mill hidden in a valley south of Chester.
Not much is known about this mill except that the current building dates from the 1600s, with later additions, and the machinery was removed in the early 1900s.
However heritage information tends to be decades out of date so you never know what to expect - the mill may be renovated and inhabited or just a pile of rubble.
This one turned out to be still standing, derelict and overgrown.
Pictures are a mixture of camera and phone from two visits, one in Dec 2019 and the other Jun 2021.
Approaching up the stream, the mill is centre right next to a little bridge, with a small outbuilding in the foreground on the left.
This outbuilding has little rooms with arched doorways at one end (pigsty?), then a room with a bread oven and a loo at the other end.
Front side of the mill. The wheel pit has now been filled in but the the waterwheel was on the left gable end.
Rear view with the overgrown water channel (leat) leading to the wheel on the right.
From the height of the leat it seems this was an overshot or breast-shot wheel.
Inside the mill where the grinding machinery would have been.
The hole where the axle of the wheel came through the wall, with a semicircular scrape from the large gear on the inside (pit wheel), and a horizontal scrape above from one of the horizontal gears (great spur).
A pair of iron wheel hubs can just be seen through the opening.
Some early-looking graffiti, maybe 1600s or 1700s.
No sign of any grinding stones upstairs - the framework below suggests there may have been two sets.
The rest of the building seems to have been last used as a house.
A view of the mill from the other side of the main stream.
I initially thought the pipe might be for a water turbine, but in fact it’s for a hydraulic ram pump - there’s a wikipedia entry for these if you are interested.
I couldn’t see a maker’s plate, but it looks like a Blake compound ram - there ought to be another bit with the waste valve buried under the mud.
Carrying on upstream through the now silted up mill pond we come to the object marked ‘pumping house’ on the map.
On the left below is what it looked like after a chunk of the ivy was removed in 2019 - a waterwheel of some sort missing its buckets and revolving in a narrow pit (right).
I came equipped with secateurs on the most recent visit, and did a bit of weeding and tidying up of fallen masonry to reveal the mechanism more clearly.
Various bits such as the connecting and piston rods are missing but you can now see how the wheel, which still spins, worked the reciprocating pump.
The output pipe from the pump emerges near the outfall from the wheel and heads up the side of the valley in the direction of a nearby farm.
Looking upstream there are two tanks on the left which I assume were for settling/filtering the stream water which was to be pumped.
The water to power the wheel seems to have been taken from the weir in the background by lengths of long piping one of which can be seen in the third picture below.
A bit of cement above the wheel with a pipe-sized indentation.
Finally, old maps show another two hydraulic ram pumps further upstream.
I had a look for these but could only find the remains of one in a bog - here’s the bog.
And here’s the flooded pit I almost fell into.
Hard to see from the photo, but there was no machinery under the water.
This is fairly typical when you start looking for rural hydraulics - the machinery has often gone, although you can usually see where it was.
