Pete Stamp Clip6 : Water Pumps

Thank you very much Pete, we’ll move on now to when you started work as a plumbers mate at Tyntesfield Estate itself, so if you can start from there if you can remember. They were thinking of getting an assistant for Albert Wyatt who was the plumber and I was told obviously to apply and I came and seen the estate agent and low and behold I got the job as a plumbers mate to Albert, my wages were to be two pounds and five shillings a week. I was told I had to meet Albert Wyatt by the Alms Houses on Clevedon Road at eight o’clock in the morning, we used to walk all the way down the field to Watercress Farm, Albert got the key opened up the door and of course, to my amazement these machines inside looked massive to me and as you walked in the door on the left-hand side there was a pump, a rotary pump that used to drive the water up to Charlton tank and on the other side was this big two-stroke paraffin engine, which I understand used to drive a search-light during the war. My job was to go down early in the morning, and I used to have to go down and this engine didn’t have sparking plugs, it was what they called a compression – ignition engine so therefore I had to go down, light a blow-lamp up, which was a big blow-lamp and heat up the end of the engine, which, when it used to glow red, it was then ready to start, well Albert obviously always used to start the engine, at fifteen I wasn’t allowed to start the engine. And he would pump the paraffin into it, swing the arm back on compression and then the engine – away it would go, and it would go so slow that it would just go pump, pump, pump, you could hear it for miles away this engine. But the other means of pumping the water up, was a water wheel which was situated by the river just outside of the building. We set the waterwheel running in the winter when there was plenty of water in the river and there was lots of water coming down, we used to use the water pump obviously there was no cost at all to the estate to pump the water up. The water comes from about three fields away, from an artesian well, which is over in the corner of one of the fields and then it is piped across to the holding reservoir just outside of the main door. Alongside of the waterwheel - the main waterwheel that pumped water to the Charlton tank, there was a pump in there, so actually the waterwheel was driving two pumps to keep the water – during the summer the water used to get low so therefore we couldn’t use the waterwheel, that’s when we used to use the paraffin engine and in addition to the paraffin engine we used to have a top-up pump which was driven by electric, they used another building and in there was another waterwheel which used to pump the water to Tyntesfield tank which used to supply water to the main house and to Belmont House. The Charlton tank used to feed the other half which was the farm and all buildings which would be before the main road to the left-hand side of the house that was fed from Charlton.