Ryhope

A colliery village

Like much of Wearside, Ryhope grew around coal, its colliery sinking shafts through the same magnesian limestone that, further along the coast, held something just as valuable: clean fresh water.

Pumping water for a growing city

In 1868, the Sunderland and South Shields Water Company built the Ryhope Pumping Station, drawing water up from 250 feet underground to supply the rapidly growing town. Its two Victorian beam engines, built by the Newcastle firm R&W Hawthorn, are genuine giants — each beam weighs around 22 tons — and kept the city supplied with water for a full century, until the station finally closed in 1967.

Still steaming today

Rather than being scrapped, the engines were preserved, and volunteers at the Ryhope Engines Museum, now Grade II* listed, still fire up the original boilers and run the beam engines under steam on selected weekends — one of the few places anywhere to see Victorian water-pumping machinery of this scale in full working order.