Stretham old engine
Encyclopedia
Stretham
Stretham is a small village and civil parish south-south-west of Ely in Cambridgeshire, England, about by road from London. Its main attraction is Stretham Old Engine, a steam-powered pump used to drain the fens. The pump is still in use today although converted to electric power. It has open...
in Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, that was used to pump water from flood-affected areas of The Fens
The Fens
The Fens, also known as the , are a naturally marshy region in eastern England. Most of the fens were drained several centuries ago, resulting in a flat, damp, low-lying agricultural region....
back into the River Great Ouse
River Great Ouse
The Great Ouse is a river in the east of England. At long, it is the fourth-longest river in the United Kingdom. The river has been important for navigation, and for draining the low-lying region through which it flows. Its course has been modified several times, with the first recorded being in...
. It is one of only three surviving drainage engines in East Anglia.
During the seventeenth century, large areas of fenland in East Anglia
East Anglia
East Anglia is a traditional name for a region of eastern England, named after an ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom, the Kingdom of the East Angles. The Angles took their name from their homeland Angeln, in northern Germany. East Anglia initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, but upon the marriage of...
were reclaimed via extensive draining schemes. Despite this, crops and livestock were frequently swept away by widescale flooding as the land sank because of the drainage. As a partial solution, windmill
Windmill
A windmill is a machine which converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Originally windmills were developed for milling grain for food production. In the course of history the windmill was adapted to many other industrial uses. An important...
s were used to pump water away from flood-affected areas, but relied on the weather and lacked the power required to lift large quantities of water.
The advent of steam power in the late 18th century offered a new solution, and these new engines began to spring up around The Fens.
The steam engine on the Old West River (Great Ouse) just south of Stretham was built by the Derbyshire
Derbyshire
Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...
firm, Butterleys, in 1831, costing £4950. It replaced four nearby windmills and its scoop wheel was used successfully for over a century to lift water from flood channels back into the river. Powered by coal
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
that was brought by barge, it consumed a ton of fuel every four hours.
The rotative beam engine
Beam engine
A beam engine is a type of steam engine where a pivoted overhead beam is used to apply the force from a vertical piston to a vertical connecting rod. This configuration, with the engine directly driving a pump, was first used by Thomas Newcomen around 1705 to remove water from mines in Cornwall...
is of the double-acting type with a beam of 24 in 8 in (7.52 m) and a flywheel 24 feet (7.3 m) in diameter. The scoop wheel
Scoop wheel
right|thumb|Rim driven Scoop wheel of the [[Stretham Old Engine]], CambridgeshireA scoop wheel may be a pump or an excavator.-Scoop wheel pump:...
it drives has been successively enlarged as the level of the fens has shrunk: the first wheel was 29 feet (8.8 m), increased to 33 feet (10.1 m) in 1850 and to 37 in 2 in (11.33 m) in 1896 and lifted 120-150 tons
Short ton
The short ton is a unit of mass equal to . In the United States it is often called simply ton without distinguishing it from the metric ton or the long ton ; rather, the other two are specifically noted. There are, however, some U.S...
of water per minute.
During use, the engine needed constant supervision, with the stoker and superintendent on 24-hour call. One superintendent even installed a telescope
Telescope
A telescope is an instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation . The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 1600s , using glass lenses...
in his window so he could supervise the workmen without the need to get his feet wet!
In 1924, the installation of a diesel engine saw the steam engine relegated to 'standby', and the last serious use was during the floods of 1939 and 1940. The pumping station was later replaced with 5 smaller, more efficient, electrical pumps that drain into the River Cam
River Cam
The River Cam is a tributary of the River Great Ouse in the east of England. The two rivers join to the south of Ely at Pope's Corner. The Great Ouse connects the Cam to England's canal system and to the North Sea at King's Lynn...
and are still in use.
The engine is open to the public in the afternoon of the second Sunday of each month.