STEAM ENGINES AND WATERWHEELS

[Stanley]

Tell Col he can look forward to a present...... He deserves an award for application!

[Stanley]

I found some interesting stuff for Wendy which I had forgotten about. She has agreed that copies would make good additions to the Earby Historical Society. The lady in Nidderdale could be in for a treat. A lot of forgotten stuff about the water wheel at Glasshouses which we moved to Quarry Bank. That involved me recording the Glasshouses Mill in 1979 and doing a report on it. I hope it helps them.

[Stanley]

I watched an old video by Fred Dibnah on the waterwheel at Quarry Bank and he said that the water power was free. he was mistaken! Dr Mary Rose did a lot of research on the water power at QB and the maintenance costs were enormous largely because of the effort needed to maintain the water resource. Being in a river valley it silted badly. For a local example see Clough Mill Dam, silted up to the cill of the dam. Likewise the old dams at Ouzledale. We had the same trouble with Bancroft dam and in periods of heavy rain I used to leave the clow open at weekend so the water would wash some of the silt away downstream, where it would have gone anyway!



One thing I noted at Quarry Bank was that after many years had elapsed, the level of the land behind the dam actually rose higher than the cill as the vegetation dropped leaves etc. and made soil.

[chinatyke]

I love hearing your snippets about steam engines and waterwheels. I wish I had taken note of them in my youth instead of just acknowledging and ignoring them as part of our industrial infrastructure. Suddenly they weren't there any more.

BTH on Skipton Road, Colne had a steam engine and the engine house was adjacent to the main road with the engine visible to passers-by. But I can't remember seeing any lodge attached to it. Would it have been using a borehole for the water supply?

Loveclough Print Works had a steam engine attached to an electricity generator. It was located next to the boiler house and access was limited to authorised personnel so I never did go inside. I remember seeing the operator stood on the top barring the flywheel round one time.

[Stanley]

BTH engine.... I doubt it China. Without knowing the engine or the mill I had a furtle through geoff Shackleton's book and failed to find any clues. Do you know what the mill was called? Many mills, including at least one in Colne and two in Barlick had underground storage reservoirs for cooling water.

[chinatyke]

The company was British Thomson-Houston Company Limited usually called just BTH.

The company re-located to Lancashire after it was bombed during World War Two at its home base in Coventry and Rugby. It was on munitions work during the war. It made electrical components when my mum worked there in the fifties. Made electric motors among other things, and I think generator sets. BTH was part of General Electric and a well known name in electrical engineering circles.

I cannot think what the mill was called, I'm sure it had a name cast in iron over one of the entrances. It could have been Oak Mill, one side was on Oak Street. It was in the area bounded by Oak St, Varley St, and Skipton road. I assume it was a textile mill at one time because one section had north-light windows typical of weaving sheds.

[Wendyf]

It was Oak Mill China, and was only demolished a few years ago after becoming a neglected eyesore. I have found a photo of a fire there in 1917.



Looking at the old maps there is no sign of water storage, though Greenhill Mill across the road has a reservoir attached (bottom left hand corner...marked as Reservoir on later maps). An earlier map from before the mill was built shows a spring which would be under the mill, so perhaps they did have underground storage.

[chinatyke]

Thanks Wendy. I'm surprised I couldn't remember it clearly because I went past the mill most days on my way to school. I've a feeling that the mill engine was over the yard wall that bounded Skipton Road and you could only see the engine properly from the upstairs of a bus. Where the 'O' is in Oak Mill in the first map.

[Wendyf]

That looks to be right over the spring doesn't it? I've just been looking at the 1840's map and you can see an open water course there which then heads west towards Stonebridge Mill in the North Valley, so the main water supply for all the mills on the North side of Colne. I believe it is now culverted under Vivary Way.

[Stanley]

Here's a précis of what Geoff has to say in his wonderful record 'The Textile Mills of Pendle'.
Oak Mill. (SD 894 407).
Build started 1896 extended in 1913. The extensions embraced the old Leather Works. Major fire in 1917. The 1896 build was powered by a Burnley Ironworks cross compound engine running at 70rpm and 350ihp. The engine that ran the 1913 shed was a two cylinder compound version of the Fleming and Ferguson patent non dead centre engine made by John Musgrave in 1888. It was second-hand and was originally at Dobson and Barlow, machinery makers, Bolton. It originally ran at 100rpm and made 350ihp but on installation at Oak Mill was speeded up to 130rpm.
Both engines were condensing and in the absence of any visible water supply on the maps we must assume that they drew water from an underground source, most likely the culverted beck. The same system was used at Calf Hall Shed and Butts Mill in Barlick.

[Stanley]

Click to enlarge. Calf Hall Shed in 1978. The arch at the nearest corner of the mill is the downstream end of the culvert that conveys Calf Hall Beck under the mill. Peeping over the wall can be seen the control wheel and gearing for the clow in the dam just below the mill which raised the level of water in the culvert and gave enough depth for the intake of the suction pipe which lifted cold water into the engine house (the building with the ventilator on top) where it condensed the steam in the exhaust. The warm water that resulted was discharged into the beck downstream of the dam. Butts Mill, the next mill down the beck used a similar system but at times suffered because of warm water coming down from Calf Hall. A common problem when mills were too close together on a water source. Even Calf Hall had problems in hot summer weather with low flows in the beck.

[Stanley]

When Bancroft shed was built and completed in 1920 Clough Mill owned the riparian rights on Gillian's Beck and until the Slaters agreed to allow Nutters to use the water the mill couldn't be built. It was a marriage linking the two families that broke the log jam but there was a clause in the permission that in conditions of low flow and hot weather Clough could ask for the beck to be diverted round the Bancroft Lodge via a culvert down the far side installed for that purpose. The diversion could be made in a chamber at the bottom of a shaft at the head of the lodge. I knew this facility was there but didn't know the reason until long after the mill closed and I was doing some deep research. We forget today how important water resources were.

[Stanley]

The dam at the back of Calf Hall Shed in 1978. At the end it dived down into a culvert that ran under the mill. Calf Hall often suffered in summer from low water and high temperatures and over the years they tried various ways of alleviating this problem. One of them was to pump water over the roof to cool it but this failed because the slates were so hot! In later years that put a borehole on on the far right hand side as we look at it. By 1978 this had been abandoned as with the removal of the engine there was no longer any need for it.

[Stanley]

In all the years I have been learning about steam engines in mills I have found many of the pitfalls that had to be negotiated to run them safely and economically. I had the advantage of being able to out this into practice when I was actually running engines. The single most intractable problem, if I had to pick one, is managing often inadequate cooling water supplies for the the condenser which is the heart of economy on an engine. Achieving a good vacuum on the back of the exhaust can give over 10% better efficiency over a non-condensing engine which is a back-breaker in terms of fuel economy. God repays the engineer well for his efforts!
Starting with the basics, the first essential is an adequate supply of cold water. You might think that this is easily solved by correctly siting the mill and good design of water management and utilisation but many a time there had to be compromises. Very few mills had perfect supplies. In fact I only found one, the engine at Masson Mill in Derbyshire which had the advantage of the full flow of the River Derwent to go at!



Engineer's heaven! The race from the weir to the turbines on the left had far more flow than was needed even in times of low water and ran underneath the engine house giving easy access to it. Another advantage was that the returning of the warm water to the race after it had served the condenser had no effect on the efficiency of the turbines.

[Stanley]

When Billycock Bracewell built Wellhouse Mill many people who understood about water supplies were curious as to why he was building there as there was no obvious water resource.....

[Stanley]

Later it transpired that he had designs on diverting water from the Corn Mill and getting control of the Bowker Drain. The former was never used even though a six inch cast iron pipe was installed. In the end, right up to the mill closing, the Bowker Drain supplied sufficient water. See CHSC minute books for much evidence supporting this including the abortive attempts to sink a viable well.



Click to enlarge. The notations added by me are based on the evidence of Harold Duxbury. The well marked in the SW corner is the abortive 180ft deep bore sunk at great expense by the CHSC but which proved useless largely because the bore hole had a kink in it which prevented a pump being installed at a low enough level.

[Stanley]

The reasons that enabled a large mill like Wellhouse to operate efficiently and economically on such a tenuous water supply were improvements in engine design. When the Craven Bank sold the mill to the CHSC they stipulated that the old beam engines must be scrapped and a single modern engine made by Burnley Ironworks installed. Two dams were used which though not deep had a large surface area to aid cooling of the available water by natural evaporation. Used warm water was fed back into the furthest dam and used all the available area for cooling. The incoming water from the Bowker Drain via the sump in Eastwood bottoms was lifted by a small pulsometer pump 24X7 and was only a small volume but in normal circumstances more than made up for losses in the system. All the rainwater run-off from the large expanse of shed roofs was fed into the lodges. All this plus very careful management ensured that the mill could run economically.

[Stanley]

Another use of water in the mills in later years was for modern sprinkler systems as a safeguard against fire. In Bancroft's case we were lucky in that there was enough pressure on the water main from Whitemoor to serve the system without pumps. Many mills like Wellhouse had to pup water up to a header tank to serve both the boiler feed water and the sprinkler system. In such cases a large steam pump, often called 'The Underwriter' started automatically as soon as the system was activated and topped up the tank on the roof.



The header tank at Wellhouse in 1978.



The Mather and Platt Underwriter at Ellenroad. Worthingtons were another common maker. very powerful pumps, double acting and efficient. In modern installations a powerful electric centrifugal pump is used.

[Stanley]

One of the engineers regular tasks, once a week, was to open a by-pass on the rising main coming into the mill which drained a little water out of the internal sprinkler system. As water flowed in from the mains to make it up it activated a turbine in the flow which rang a bell with a large gong on the wall outside. This was in effect a fire alarm, if it went off it meant that either sprinklers had been activated by heat or there was a leak in the system.



The sprinkler valve on the rising main. Note the leather straps and locks which prevented any tampering with the valve.

[Stanley]

The sprinklers themselves were strategically placed small valves in the sprinkler lines. They were activated by heat. The most common had a glass bulb as a strut to hold the valve shut, if heated beyond a certain temperature the bulb fractured and allowed water to flow. In some very aggressive situations the bulb was replaced with a metal strut made of very low temperature melting point alloy which served the same purpose.



A typical liquid bulb sprinkler head. You always had spares in the engine house for use if one was accidentally damaged.

[chinatyke]

You always had spares in the engine house ...

... and in Stanley's treasure chest!

[Stanley]

That's true China. I have always believed that the best way to thoroughly understand something is to be able to hold it in your hand. The sprinkler head is a case in point. Imagine trying to give a full description in words....
It's probably worth mentioning that if you installed an approved sprinkler system you got a very big reduction in your fire insurance premium as well as peace of mind. It was a very efficient system.

[Stanley]

Apart from running the engine and supervising the work of the firebeater (Not a big job with a man as good as John Plummer) there were odd maintenance jobs that came up which weren't in the Boy's Own Book of Engine Tenting. One was to walk round the shed occasionally after going round the oils. (You could be away for ten minutes then with very little risk) Time spent with the weavers was never lost and they trusted me because I had put their wages up in my first few months in the job by close attention to the steady running of the engine and adjusting the speed for the atmospheric conditions. My mate, the old tackler cum weaver Billy Lambert was my speed control. He would let me know with a small gesture whether the speed could go up a bit or in very dry weather when the belts had shrunk, lowering it a bit. It was surprising how much difference the weather made and how well rewarded in terms of production close attention to the speed could be. I encouraged John to do the same thing, he could get an idea from the tapers where they were at and adjust his steam raising accordingly. His skill was evident on the pressure gauge, rock steady on 140psi all day no matter what the demand. That made my job a lot easier!



My speed regulator Billy 'Two Rivers' Lambert. He moved from tackling to weaving after a few lifting accidents and was a happy and very skilled man.

[Stanley]

It's probably worth saying a bit more about the effect atmospheric conditions had on the plant and the mill. In the old days of coal fires you would often hear someone say "That fire's burning frost". This meant that they had noted the brightness of the fire which was an indication that the temperature differential between the flue gas in the chimney and the ambient outside temperature was high so you got more draught. Add to that the fact that a dry frost is often accompanied by elevated atmospheric pressure and that further aided draught in a flue. This was even more true of an industrial boiler with a high chimney.
People talk about a fire 'drawing well', this is the wrong way to look at it. What is actually happening is that the colder the weather and the higher the atmospheric pressure the greater the differential between the pressure inside the flue at the chimney top and the pressure at the level of the grate. It was this differential that forced air into the grate. This explains why the higher the chimney, the better the draught as a general rule.
Another factor was the wind. Many flues draw better when the wind is in a certain quarter than others. This is because that particular wind direction is encouraging and up-draught at the chimney top and further lowering resistance to the flue gas getting out of the flue. Certain winds at Bancroft actually caused a down draught it the chimney top. You could see this clearly because the smoke was driven down as it emerged. The better the air supply through the grate and the thicker you could run your fire and this meant better steam raising.

[Stanley]

Anyone who has had anything to do with second-hand boilers, particularly Lancashire Boilers, knows that the best ones came from mills that had been running an engine. The ones to avoid were the ones from breweries or dye works. There is a good reason for this. The most destructive conditions for a boiler, assuming good water and general maintenance, are when there are sudden violent fluctuations in pressure such as those where large vats have to be heated quickly. Not unusual to see a drop of a third in pressure while this is happening. This fluctuation means that the metal of the shell of the boiler is continually expanding and contracting and this induces stresses in the metal that can result in plates that are cracked or 'grooved'. Joints between plates are weakened and often leaks ensue which have to be attended to.
A boiler servicing an engine has none of these problems because the essence of firing for an engine is to maintain constant and steady pressure. You have heard me say often that John Plummer gave me a rock steady 140psi all day unless there was some unusual circumstance. Even during the night, a properly banked boiler maintains that pressure. The result is that such a boiler is not subject to the stresses in a brewery or dye works application and given proper water treatment and good general maintenance can last well over 100 years.