City’s ‘tasteful’ water tower

ANDREW WALKER of The Survey of Lincoln considers a familiar building on Lincoln’s skyline.

STANDING prominently alongside the cathedral and the castle is the Westgate Water Tower.

For many new visitors it is occasionally mistaken for part of the castle complex, as it resembles a medieval keep.

The water tower is of course a much more recent arrival, having been fully opened as late as 1911. Its construction is the direct result of Lincoln’s typhoid epidemic of 1904-05, during which 131 lives were lost and over 1,000 cases were recorded. The construction of the tower itself caused some controversy. Few people challenged the need for a new water system to serve the city following the water-borne typhoid epidemic. However, questions were raised at the cost of the new building. Several designs were considered and, in the end two remained in the running, ‘design number 8’, produced by a local engineer, which was regarded as fully functional, and the design of the eminent architect Reginald Bloomfield. The cost of constructing Bloomfield’s design was significantly more than the alternative option, partly owing to the use of expensive materials such as Darley Dale gritstone for the external walls, and the employment of architectural design flourishes such as the use of cartouche inlay panels and fleur de lys patterning.

However, as Cllr Pennell argued in May 1909, ‘in Reginald Blomfield they had a man who knew what taste was, they wanted taste in Lincoln.’

Blomfield was certainly a man with a growing architectural reputation: he later designed the city’s Central Library and the Usher Gallery, refurbished much of London’s Regent Street and designed notable war memorials, such as the Menin Gate in Ypres. The criticisms directed at the city council for its extravagance on this building, are notable as they had been accused in the years up to and including 1905 of being reluctant to invest in Lincoln’s water supply, ignoring the advice of many medical experts. The Westgate Water Tower is part of a complex engineering feat. Upon its opening, the tower was connected by a 22-mile pipeline, comprising 10,000 iron pipes, to a new underground source of water for the city in Eckesley, near Retford in Nottinghamshire. Water was delivered to the Westgate building, with a capacity of 1.4 million litres, from which the above hill area was supplied. The overflow of water was then passed through a further system of pipes to the reservoir at Bracebridge Heath. Lincoln’s proposed extraction of water from Eckesley caused much controversy in Nottinghamshire, with councils in Mansfield, Nottingham, Retford, Southwell and Worksop, as well as Nottinghamshire County Council, initially opposing the plans, fearing the impact this might have on their own water supplies. The Lincoln Corporation Water Bill was finally passed in Parliament in 1908 to enable the scheme to be started. Water rights at Eckesley were secured from the landowner, the Duke of Newcastle, and a neighbouring farm was bought from the Duke of Portland, to house the necessary water pumping equipment.

On Wednesday 4 October 1911, in driving rain, and after 90 minutes of speeches, hundreds of dripping inhabitants watched the mayor ceremonially turn on the tap at the Arboretum lake, and saw water rising in an immense column, falling in a glittery fountain of spray. Lincoln’s new water system, including the Westgate Tower, was now in action.