Sandfields Pumping Station – a great historic building with immense history and social significance – not just to Lichfield, but to the Black Country. Lichfield Discovered and local historian Dave Moore have saved this valuable asset for the community.

Sandfields Pumping Station champion and public historian extraordinaire Dave Moore has been in touch to let me know that this Monday evening (12th June 2017) there will be the Annual General Meeting of the Lichfield Waterworks Trust charity, formerly the Friends of Sandfields Pumping Station group.

The meeting is at the Bowling Green pub, Lichfield from 7:30pm and is of course open to anyone interested, and some positions within the group are open to application.

Dave wrote:

The Annual General Meeting of the Lichfield Waterworks Trust will take place on:

Monday 12 June @7.30pm, in the rear meeting room of the

The Bowling Green
Friary Road
Lichfield
Staffordshire
WS13 6QJ

Tel: 01543 257344

The Bowling Green serves some great food and real ales, so do come along, everyone is welcome.

Annual General Meeting Agenda

Notes of the respective reports and meeting notes are in the link below

• Apologies.
• Notes of the June 2016 AGM
• Matters Arising.
• Annual Trustees Report
• The Treasurer’s Report and Presentation of Accounts for the year ended 31st. March 2017.
• Election of Trustees
• All three Trustees are to stand down and are eligible to stand for re-election.
• David Moore – Chairman
• Gill Bellenie – Secretary
• Chris Pattison – Treasurer
• Kate Gomez – Community and Knitwear Engagement
• Philip Manton – Governance and Fundraising

Non-members are welcome to attend but cannot vote at the AGM.

Pleas note we will be serving a light buffet, so please come and enjoy the evening.

May Meeting notes can be downloaded here

News

The work groups are doing some sterling work on the building and the engine.

We have a team who are carefully removing objects found in cupboard and store rooms and carefully cleaning them in preparation for photographing recording and cataloguing.

Our photographic and catalogue team are making steady progress with the hundreds of objects found in and around the pumping station.

Work cleaning the engine is showing some remarkable progress as a reward for a lot of hard and dirty work.

The bid team are working hard to put together a grant application for a feasibility study.

The aim and objective of this study is to develop and produce a sustainable business plan to demonstrate that as a trust we are capable of managing this site in a business-like manner that clearly outlines how we will deliver an ongoing programme of funding, maintenance and renovation of the site. We will also outline how we will make it accessible, preserve the heritage and give benefit to the community in perpetuity.

George Dickinson of the Markham Grange Steam Museum has very kindly done a draft report on the viability of restoration of the engine to operation by steam. We will be sharing the report with our engineering team for their thoughts and comments.

George done some amazing work at Markham Grange Steam Museum, a place well worth a visit, so please do go up and say hi to George.

Markham Grange Steam Museums website is here

Forthcoming Events

We at the Lichfield Waterworks Trust just love getting out into the community and doing events that share our story. As always, we need help to organise and run these events, so if you can help on any of the following events, please let us know.

May Day event

A successful May Day event had been organised on Lichfield Market Square with a Guess the weight of the Spanner competition raising a great deal of interest and over £100.

The competition prize of £10 went to a 13-year-old local boy.

Waitrose Green Tokens Scheme

LWT is one of the featured charities for the Lichfield Waitrose green tokens scheme. Please shop and vote!

Florette Festival Market

We will have a stand at the Florette Festival Market 8/9 July. John Child will be bringing his replica Newcomen Beam engine. John came last year and his hand built beam engine was quite an eye catcher that aroused a lot of interest. John is an amazing guy who has driven the giant Cornish beam engine at the Museum of water in London. He is a long term supporter of the work we are doing at Sandfields Pumping station

Here is a film of John’s beam Engine working

Huddlesford Gathering

Huddlesford Gathering is on the weekend of 23/24 September, we have kindly been invited to have a stand and are therefore looking for volunteers to meet and greet visitors.

Can you help?

If you enjoy meeting people and can spare a couple of houses on either of these days, please get in touch.

Health and Safety

We know people have mixed views about Health and Safety, however we have a very clear view about our members. We think you are incredible and value the work you do; therefore, we want to keep you safe.

We have an amazing health and safety manager, Phil Bowers, who has a very practical no nonsense hands on approach to health and safety.

We like to keep things simple and want our members not to feel daunted by health and safety regulations. We will walk you though the process and give you practical hands on training at a pace set by you.

To date 20 people have received site induction. Those who wish to volunteer on site please let Phil know.

Membership

May is the time of year when you need to renew your membership. We like to keep things simple at the Lichfield Waterworks trust, so if you are happy to continue your membership, we will roll it over for you till next May.

If you do not wish to continue with this very exciting project, then please just reply to this email with the word “unsubscribe” in the subject line.

If you are not already a member and would you like to be a part of one of the region’s most exciting heritage projects then please, join us now by filling in Membership Application Form by going to our membership page here. It is free to join and be a part of this incredibly exciting project.

Donations

We have incurred some considerable expenditure covering legal costs, insurance and training. We will always invest in our people, and we are planning further training days soon too. All these costs soon mount up, so if you can donate, then please visit our donation page here, any amount is helpful and well appreciated.

You can also do a direct bank transfer:

Bank Details:
HSBC Bank
Account Name: Lichfield Waterworks Trust
Sort Code: 40-28-18
Account Number: 02050722

or

Please make cheques payable to: Lichfield Waterworks Trust, and send to our address:

22 Walsall Road
Lichfield
WS13 8AB

Finally

Thank you everyone for your continued support and helping to make a difference in your community.

We never share your data with anyone else, but we do like to have your details correct. If there are any errors or omissions, please let us know.

Our data protection policy is here

Do pop over to Dave Moore’s blog and check out the history of Sandfields Pumping Station, an almost forgotten gem – the group also has a Facebook page.

Dave is, of course, one of the leading lights of Lichfield Discovered, along with Kate ‘Cardigan’ Gomez from Lichfield Lore.

It’s great to see people like Dave encourage a better attitude to our historic buildings, rather than that which we seem to have here in Walsall, where we regard heritage architecture as merely ‘fuel’.

Please do attend if you’re able, it’s sure to be enlightening and educational.