Shields Road, Fulwell Waterworks

Fulwell Waterworks. The 1st edition OS mapping shows a Reservoir and Engine. Fulwell Water Pumping Station NZ 389606(V). Constructed for the Sunderland and South Shields Water Company in operation by 1856 with two rotative, pumping engines of 70 horsepower each. These were replaced by two Uniflo engines in 1925 but the station is now electrified. Engine and boiler houses remain, built in brick but with stone dressing to openings, corner buttresses etc. {2}. Gothic brick engine house with hipped slate windows rising behind machiolated parapet. Stone dressings to windows and doors and buttresses. Elevations divided into two storeys by stone band. East and west elevations divided by central buttress, lit by lancet windows, corner buttresses to north elevation which contains main entrance approached by a lflight of steps and framed by pointed arch. Above entrance is a square headed 3-light mullioned window. Projecting square tower rises at south east corner with pyramidal slate roof. Workshops and boiler house attached to south and orientate east-west. Single storey, brick with a double pitch hipped roof {3}. Work started in 1853, a temporary (presumably Cornish) engine being used for sinking. This was replaced by two permanent engines supplied by Messrs Whitham & Sons of Leeds. Apart from the boiler house chimney which was demolished, the buildings remain much as they were built in the 1850s. In 1903 the original boilers were replaced by three Lancashire boilers and in 1925 the beam engines were replaced by two Uniflow steam engines. Two new Cornish boilers survived until the 1950s or 1960s when the station was electrified {4}.