Water for the colliery was originally supplied by a steam driven pump situated near the valley bottom at a site known as the Horse Fair Spring. The pump-house was located some distance from the river and it’s possible that the water was obtained from the spring.

In 1992 the pump was a Tangye ‘Special’ fed from a vertical boiler mounted on the same bed plate. This was a horizontally mounted double-acting ram pump directly coupled to the engine piston and capable of delivering 7200 galls/hour against a head of 133ft.   It had a 10in diameter piston with 12in stroke, a 6in diameter ram and ran at 50 strokes per minute. There was a duplicate boiler and pump at the pump-house.

The Tangye ‘Special’ pump was not patented until 1884, however, and there must have been another pump in use before the ‘Specials’ were installed.  What type this was is unknown.

Tangye Special pump at the Horse Fair pump house (FoPP)

By 1900 the engine-house had been demolished and the steam pumps replaced by electric ones located in a new building closer to the river, where a small weir created a reservoir. This pump-house has also been demolished but the weir still remains.

The weir at the site of the later Horse Fair pump house

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05 May, 2009