Slitting Mill Pumping Station
1933 'Perhaps the best example of co-ordinated water supply from artesian wells to be found in this country occurs in the important undertaking known as the South Staffordshire Waterworks Company, some thirty pumping stations serving the mains of its area, which approaches close to Derby and Stafford on the north and includes a crowded industrial district in the south, where it lies between Birmingham and Wolverhampton. Three of these stations, representative of different methods of operating deep-well pumps, have been, within the past few years, dealt with in these columns, viz., the Slade Heath station at the west boundary,
employing vertical triple-expansion steam engines,
in Engineering, vol. exxi, page 426 (1926); the Sandfields station, in the centre at Lichfield, with
horizontal uniflow steam engines and electric motors,
in vol. cxxiii, page 473 (1927) ; and the Little Hay station, near the eastern boundary, with heavy-oil
engines and gearing, in vol. cxxxiv, page 613 (1932). The Slitting Mill pumping station now to be described
is situated in the north-western part of the area, near
the town of Rugeley, and is a wholly electrically-operated station, thus presenting an interesting
comparison with the other three. .... The name of the station, Slitting Mill, has associations with a vanished phase of local industry which
may fittingly be referred to here. The situation of
the pumping station is to-day one of the most
pleasant stretches of Cannock Chase, but five
hundred years ago the valley between Hednesford
and Rugeley, at the foot of which it stands, was
a busy centre for the smelting, rolling, and slitting
of iron. A stream, the Rising Brook, flowing down it, supplied power for blowing the bellows of the
ironstone smelting furnaces along its sides, though
nothing now remains of these old bloomeries but
heaps of slag, ..... The contractors for the whole of
the buildings were Messrs. Thomas Lowe and Sons,
Limited, Burton-upon-Trent, with Messrs. Executors
of William Morris, Oldbury, as sub-contractors for
the brickwork and Messrs. Empire Stone Company,
Limited, Birmingham, for the artificial stone.
..... The plant,
supplied by Messrs. Mather and Platt, Limited,
as the main contractors, consists of two sets of
electrically-driven, variable-speed, direct-coupled,
vertical-spindle, centrifugal borehole and force
pumps of the multi-stage type working in scries.
......'. The whole of the plant was constructed to
the designs and specification of Fred. J. Dixon, Engineer-in-Chief to the
South Staffordshire Waterworks Co.[1] [2]