Dear Listers
I thought that I should alert an international audience to the
impending threat to the Totnes Pumping Station - which was the last
element of Brunel's atmospheric railway system to be built (but never
apparently commissioned) on the South Devon Railway in 1847-8. It is
a building in an italianate style, and is well preserved in a
commercial dairy that has now closed. Dairy Crest who own it, are in
the process of demolition - they have already taken the tiles of the
roof, and will complete the process in the next month.
English Heritage initially recommended that the building be listed in
2000, but did nothing about it. In Nov. 2007, as it was threatened, a
request was made to spot list it, and the report on this concluded
that because it had been significantly altered it was not on
sufficient architectural merit to list. This decision is currently
being appealed at DCMS. EH's view seems both wrong and perverse,
given that the only damage to the building was the demolition of the
Chimney in the 1930's, the rest of the complex is completely intact -
although difficult to see as there is plant inside. For example the
original roof is all there, as are all the openings etc, although
there has been some relining on the interior walls.
The building is clearly designed by Brunel personally - a fact that
EH totally overlooked - as we have sketches for it (or a building
very similar) in his private notebooks that we hold at the University
of Bristol. There are only two other examples of his pumping system
at Torre and Starcross (both listed 2* and 1), which interesting are
less similar to the Brunel drawings than Totnes. It is a significant
example of his 'Italianate phase' of railway architecture, of which
there are relatively few other examples (see Steven Brindle's book on
Brunel).
This is a case of more than local importance. It shows that heritage
organisations are still basing their decision to preserve on purely
aesthetic criteria, and can completely ignore the intense
archaeological / historical importance of particular structures. It
seems to be incredible that a building of such manifest international
importance, by one of the greatest railway pioneers, from a period of
rapid experimentation in this new technology (in this case
representing a failure). If we wish to understand the process of
change and innovation in technology, we have to study not just the
famous successes, BUT ALSO THE FAILURES. Totnes represents precisely
this point, and is in many ways is as historically important as
Saltash or the SS Great Britain.
Best wishes,
Mark
Mark Horton.
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