About The Trust

Wall Grange Water Works

Boiler House, Wall Grange

The Staffordshire Potteries Water Works Company promoted a Bill in Parliament and this received the Royal Assent on the 9th July, 1847

This Act incorporated the subscribers into a Company with a capital of £60,000, named the first directors of the Company, specified the limits of area of the Act, and authorised the construction of works to enable certain springs which discharged into the River Churnet near Wall Grange, to be collected and pumped to a reservoir to be constructed at Ladderedge.

Wall Grange Water Works About 1854

From Ladderedge the water was to be conveyed by a gravitation main to a proposed reservoir at the top of Hanley, from which mains were to be laid to Hanley, Stoke, Burslem, Tunstall, Fenton, Trentham and Newcastle. To compensate the River Churnet for the abstraction of water from these springs, an impounding reservoir was to be built in the Deep Hayes valley.

The construction of Wall Grange works was put in hand without delay. The new Company was, however, soon in difficulties for the Cornish beam steam pumping engine for Wall Grange made for them by Messrs. Sandys Vivian, of Hale, Cornwall, was unfortunately sunk in the Mersey, the vessel being completely lost with most of its cargo.

Another engine of the same type, named "Stafford", was constructed and the works were in operation in September, 1849. A second engine by the same makers and of almost identical design, named "Davenport", was erected and put to work in 1854.

Stafford Beam Engine 1849-1932

The original beam steam pumping engines, which had been at work almost continuously since being installed , were replaced in 1933 by three electrically driven surface pumps. This new plant was installed in the original "Stafford" beam engine house which was re-modelled. The "Davenport" engine house and boiler house were demolished about the same time.

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