The Water Tank


This article was uploaded by Nicholas Cleak at 23:29 09 February 2008

Around the back are the remains of the huge 1200 gallon main water tank. (NM048) It is constructed of 2 ½ inch thick slate for the bottom and 1 ½ inch slate for the four sides with lead pipe going to and from it. The tank alone weighed 4 tons (2 tons for the slate tank and the water inside another 2 tons.) It wouldn’t have fed the upper floors due to it’s placement about 10 feet up, but it would have fed the steam boiler which resides in the cellar (NM009) and perhaps was pumped around the house. The rooms all have coal fire places there was no central heating in those days!

Elsewhere in the grounds is a galvanized water heating tank ,(NG016) this would have been heated by flames of some kind to supply hot water , it’s capacity about 25% that of the main cold water tank . The slate slabs have fallen down as in the picture but you can see the joins and slots which much have been cut by hand but look so straight that they could have been cut on a modern milling machine. (NM155)