I asked the Kew Bridge Steam Museum about information on the tower and they kindly provided with the following background..."The Tower at the Kew Bridge Steam Museum was built in 1867 to the design of Alexander Fraser, engineer to the Grand Junction Waterworks Company. It is in the Italianate style, probably based on a campanile – a detached bell tower built alongside an Italian church. The design is very similar to an earlier tower (since demolished) at the company’s Campden Hill works, although the latter had an open top as it was also a chimney. The Tower was not a chimney, but a standpipe; it houses massive vertical cast iron pipes through which water was pumped before it left the Waterworks. The standpipe acted as a buffer between water under the pulsating pressure produced by the massive steam engines, and the constant pressure required in the mains.The Tower houses five massive cast iron pipes, which together make up the standpipe.The early non-rotative pumping engines did not produce a constant pressure of water, but rather a series of pulses, coinciding with the power strokes of the engine. The tower contained two systems of large diameter vertical pipes through which water was pumped before passing to the mains. The pipes acted as a “buffer state” between water under the pulsating pressure of the engines, and the constant pressure required in the mains. It also served to protect against sudden loss of load in the event, for example, of a burst water main; such an event could lead to catastrophic damage to the engine.The current standpipe is actually the third and the only one to have been enclosed with brick, a measure designed to protect the massive cast iron pipes within from frost damage. The slits in the brickwork are believed to have been included to allow small fires to be lit at the base to gently warm the pipes in severe weather.The first standpipe was fixed to the side of the chimney and both were located where the waterwheel now stands. It survived until 1846 when a new standpipe was built, roughly in the position of the current one, as part of major improvements suggested by Thomas Wicksteed. This second standpipe was described by Dickens as “...an immensely tall thin column that shoots up into the air...and seems to require four smaller, thinner and not much shorter props to keep it upright.” (Household Words April 1850) These “props” were actually pipes taking water into the mains network.Following a series of severe frosts during the winter of 1866, the pipes split and the Grand Junction Water Works company directors commissioned Aird & Sons, to build the current structure at a cost of £4802.6s.0d. It was completed on October 23rd 1867. Aird & Sons were a world-class construction company, which laid thousands of miles of gas and water pipes, and later built the Aswan Dam."I have found a reference to a book about the company Aird & Sons that built the tower called 'Deptford, Toronto and Kingston: The Early Years of Charles Aird, Victorian Engineer' by Charles Aird www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1845300211/thegrimsaypre-21/026-0380102-5940416
Duncan Walker ● 7942d