Leicester 2023, Moments, Meanderings And Memories. Part 17 — Abbey Pumping Station
Abbey Pumping Station, its proper name I suppose, but not the name I used to know it as, or ever called it myself before now. I see on the council website that the name I’ve always used is there, but it is in brackets. I knew this place as the Museum of Technology.
When I was very young, we used to visit a fair bit. A small area inside the large building was laid out with wooden display units with glass fronts and sides so you could see what was on display, but couldn’t touch. I remember coming on a school trip once when I was at primary school, walking down from Harrison Road and back. They briefly hustled us past the beam engines, the only time I ever got in to see them close up back then. They were always hidden away behind the locked doors, leaving us to try and squint through the windows at them. The days they had it working were few and far between and I never made it to one.
For four years I would pass the building cycling to and from work on a Saturday, or more often during school and polytechnic holidays as I made my way from Lancashire Street to Beaumont Leys Shopping Centre, and my job at Superdrug. I’d speed along the path coming past the sea scouts, over the footbridge from Ross Walk, and then up Corporation Road. And in doing so I’d take the Victorian Red Brick Hall and Chimney for granted.
There had been some random machines and vehicles in the grounds, but they looked more like they had been abandoned there and left to rust and decay. As if no one knew what to do with them.
But a lot changes over the years. There are random machines out on display I the grounds, but they are placed there for a reason and have information boards about them.
And even before entering the grounds there was a heritage board.
All the time I came here when I lived in Leicester, I never entered the site from the entrance there is now near the National Space Centre. It was always entered from the Corporation Road side.
The grounds are well kept now, and well laid out. Everything is more visitor friendly. And inside is unexpected. It’s hard to reconcile just how different it is now from when I came here as a child. The displays have both, changed, and improved, beyond recognition.
It is a long time since I was here last, but I wonder if any of the items on display were here the last time I was. There is certainly a lot more on display now. Plenty of machines of old.
And examples of the Victorian sewerage tunnels, linking into what the building was erected to help with.
There is a surprising amount of household items around, such as the boot bath.
And the old living room set up.
An old penny farthing bike in front of a Dunlop metal sign gives a nod to the former Dunlop works over in Evington perhaps, a site which was put up for sale last year for over six million pounds.
A plaque to the opening of filtration works at the Vestry Street baths is here on the wall as well. This led to a bit of a rabbit hole for me. It is appropriate as the Vestry Street baths were designed by Stockdale Harrison, who also designed the very pumping house I was stood in taking this photo, and many other buildings in and around Leicester. His firm also designed De Montfort Hall.
I spent a while looking up what else he’d built and then ended up writing a piece on him.
Early cinema, film, cameras, projectors et al is celebrated here, and the mini theatre is a nice cool dark place to relax after the trek to get here. Helen was enjoying the tranquillity in there only to be disturbed by another woman going in there and sitting next to her despite there being other seats, and then proceeding to shout for her husband to come and join here. He had wisely already fled to the beam engines room.
I was already there, marvelling at the feats of Victorian engineering that they are.
And how small I felt next to them.
What I love is the craftmanship and design that went into the building around it. The wonderful, patterned brickwork. The leaf and scroll designs on the supporting columns. The colouring of the vast wheels of the engine.
It is all magnificent, and I think it is great that it has been kept. Not only kept, but restored and now on full display.
Compare and contrast to any boiler room in a modern building. Functional yes, but nothing you would want to look at more than once.
To the side there was a door out into a café area. Cafe must have been a swear word in the eighties. Places that had them closed them down (such as the pavilion at Rushey Fields), and places that didn’t would never have added them as they have here now. By the looks of the room, they must also use it for an activity area on school visits and the like.
Through the other side, and I’m not sure if the door is supposed to be open, but it is and so we have a look inside.
I’m not sure what this room used to be for. I’ve seen the like of it in old power stations (such as the one at Greenwich). It looks like a massive mechanic’s pit, though what they might be inspecting the bottom of is a mystery. It looks like the room is mainly used for storage nowadays.
Back out in the engine hall is the Corporation of Leicester plaque which shows before it was the Abbey Pumping Station, or the Museum of Technology, it was the Beaumont Leys Sewage Pumping Station. So, all the excrement was pumped out to Beaumont Leys. It might be said by some that things never change.
Coming out of engine hall and there is a part of the museum dedicated to Leicester’s trams. It is interesting to see the lists of destinations that were on the roll.
Before descending the steps to have a look I can get an unobstructed view of the little train going around on its raised track loop in this hall and over the little shop.
Down on the floor there are more engines of all shapes and sizes.
The inside of a tram.
And a model of one.
An old telephone box with Meccano models inside.
And Imperial Typewriters. The last time we were in Leicester the industrial dispute in the seventies at Imperial Typewriters was the subject of the temporary exhibition at the Newarkes.
Proper old school kitchen implements are on display. I may not have seen them at the museum before, but I wouldn’t have needed to. My old next-door neighbour in Lancashire Street still had these in her kitchen into the nineties.
The final piece on the way to the exit is back to transport.
Bicycles, motorbikes, and motorcars, all of them made in Leicester.
And then it is time to exit past the gift shop, and a few nice little items added to my collection, before heading out the way we came in.
Next stop, the National Space Centre.
Other pieces will appear in this library as they are added, or check out the previous pieces published.
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