Building record 7793/0/1 - Former Engine House at Engine Pond

Datestone of 1737

{1} Engine house. Dated 1737 with C19 alterations. Banded ironstone and limestone ashlar to front, hipped pantile roof, brick lateral stack. One-unit plan. 1-storey, 2-window range. Door to left of centre with wood lintel extending over window to right. Signs of other blocked window or door. Pair of horizontal oval windows below eaves to left and right of central datestone; both windows now blocked. Overhanging eaves. The building is approached from path along dam of Engine Pond and faces the water. Pump room at basement level. No machinery appears to have survived. It formerly housed the pump and ram supplying water to Castle Ashby (q.v.) and was approached by an avenue aligned on west front of house, portions of which still survive. Engine house and avenue appear on an estate map dated 1760. (Castle Ashby Archives)

{3}{4} Pump house situated at the north-east corner of the Engine Pond, which is at the end of a track heading west-north-west from the north-south road through the village, at a point opposite the shops in the former Home Farm. The building is of banded limestone and Northampton sand ironstone, single storey facing onto the pond, but two storeys at the rear. It has a red tiled hipped roof and originally had an external waterwheel on the north-west side, driving pumps inside the building. During the C19th these were replaced by large hydraulic rams which in turn were replaced by electric pumps situated in another building, now derelict, a short distance to the north-east. The pump house is now a dwelling.

{5} Undated photo;

<1> Clews Architects, 1980s, Database for Listing of Historic Buildings of Special Architectural Interest: Northamptonshire, 12/14 (Digital archive). SNN102353.

<2> List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest ("Greenback"), F12 (unchecked) (Catalogue). SNN45262.

<3> Northamptonshire Industrial Archaeology Group, 2001, A Guide To The Industrial Heritage Of Northamptonshire, Site 58 (checked) (Gazetteer). SNN104759.

<4> Northamptonshire Industrial Archaeology Group, 2011, A Guide To The Industrial Heritage of Northamptonshire (2nd Edition), Site 59 (checked) (Gazetteer). SNN107622.

<5> Photographs of buildings in Castle Ashby (Photographs). SNN111838.

<6> Bailey, B, Pevsner, N, and Cherry, B, 2013, The Buildings of England: Northamptonshire, p. 165 (Book). SNN111989.

Record last edited

Mar 8 2024 11:28AM