Claymills Victorian Pumping Station - Steaming Days

Join us on 5th and 6th May when we will be steaming – there will also be the Rolls Royce Car Exhibition.

People sometimes wonder what’s the difference between a Steaming Weekend, and static viewing is. Static viewing you can do any time our double gates are open; we’ll be happy to welcome you, let you wander round or give you a guided tour, but you won’t see the thing that makes Claymills come alive; the engines working.

We raise steam 7 times a year; if there’s a Bank Holiday, our weekend is Sunday and Monday, if not, plain old Saturday and Sunday. It takes 3 days of hard work by the boilermen and £1,000 worth of coal per day to raise that steam in our 30ft Lancashire boilers – they’ve been known to appreciate visitors taking a hand at stoking!

The steam drives our Victorian workshop, all 4 five-storey-high beam engines that used to pump all the sewage and brewery waste away from Burton, (don’t worry, we don’t do that any more,) more than 25 other smaller ancillary stationary engines, our working dynamos, (the oldest in the country,) and even heats the water in our Victorian bath-house.

Whilst the boilermen are raising steam, the front of house team are preparing the children’s activities, welcoming visiting exhibitors, and making sure that our Stoker’s Rest café is well stocked with snacks and cakes.

You can stop for a cuppa and get a light meal before (or after) walking around the site taking in the sights, sounds and smells, (hissing steam, hot oil, our Whispering Giant beam engines,) and talking to our very knowledgeable volunteers, who, of course, are the ones who bring the place to life at a steaming.