Technology and the Big House in Ireland, c. 1800

Technology and the Big House in Ireland, c. 1800–c.1930 By Charl ...

Chapter 1:

Water Supplies

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Plate 10. Garron Tower water pump house.

Source. Author's photograph of water pump house near Garron Tower, County Antrim.

externally, and there is some possibility that the National Museum of Ireland may restore it to working order for demonstration purposes.

Garron Tower, a summer residence for the marchioness of Londonderry, was built high on a headland called Garron Point in County Antrim. The work was carried out during the Great Famine years and was completed in 1850.³⁷ Water supplies were delivered to the elevated site using a waterwheel-driven pump. The machinery, which began working in 1854, was accommodated in the elegant pump house shown in plate 10, which was erected near the Coast Road and is still in existence.³⁸ Fred Hamond described the pump house and its machinery as follows:

A dressed basalt pump-house (with mullioned dummy window on the seaward side) houses a triple-throw pump, chain driven off a 12 ft diameter by 2½ ft wide all-metal high-breastshot waterwheel. The supply stream is reputedly the shortest river in Ireland, at 130 yds. Now superseded by nearby electric pumps.³⁹