Further updates on the lost pump... click image to visit the Chasewater Wildlife Group's news page.
Sorry about the patchy nature of updates at the moment – life is really interfering with my blogging activities at the moment.
This is just a quick note to say to people interested in the intriguing question of the Victorian pump house at Chasewater that Graham Evans has added a new post to the Chasewater Wildlife Group news page on the subject, including some map segments.
For what it’s worth, I think that the canal was probably being reverse-fed from mines at the time (something is ringing a bell about a mine pumping into the Slough Arm, but I’s hazy), and being at the top of the Lichfield and Hatherton Lock flight, as well as Birchills and Rushall, the water loss must have been huge at the peak of traffic. Therefore I think Chasewater would have been topped up wherever possible to reuse water stocks. Both myself and [Howmuch?] were idly speculating as to whether the Nine-Foot was used as a settling pond, as the water wouldn’t have been too clean. All random thoughts of course.
My thanks to Graham Evans, a genuine lover of Chasewater.