Sitting on Corporation Road on the north side of Leicester, alongside the River Soar and next to the National Space Centre, the Abbey Pumping Station is a museum of science and technology that preserves one of the city’s most striking Victorian industrial buildings. Designed in 1890 by Leicester architect Stockdale Harrison and completed in 1891 by Leicester Corporation, the grand structure houses four Woolf compound beam engines built by Gimson and Company of Leicester – all retained and gradually restored to full working order.
From Sewage to Science
The building was originally constructed to solve a serious sanitation problem. Leicester’s first attempt at sewage disposal came in 1850, when Thomas Wicksteed designed sewers leading to a treatment works on the northern edge of the town. Limited capacity and persistent pollution in the River Soar made a better solution necessary. The answer was to pump sewage to a farm on higher ground at Beaumont Leys, replacing a smaller facility at Knighton. Two main trunk sewers fed the station: one running from the east under Bruin Street and the Grand Union Canal, and another following the route of Abbey Lane across fields. By 1912, the 2,000-acre sewage farm and a pumping capacity of up to 20 million gallons a day were already struggling to keep pace with the city’s growth, with 130 miles of new sewers added since the station opened. In 1939 a ram pump was installed, reportedly the largest of its kind in Europe at the time. The station continued pumping Leicester’s sewage until 1964, when electric pumps took over, and the Wanlip Sewage Treatment Plant eventually rendered the building redundant.
The Museum Today
In 1972 the building reopened as a museum run by Leicestershire Museums. When Leicester City Council became a unitary authority in 1997, the Abbey Pumping Station came under the council’s jurisdiction. Visitors can watch the four working steam-powered beam engines in operation, and the museum also holds collections covering transport, public health, light and optics, toys, and civil engineering. An old-fashioned film theatre and educational displays – largely focused on water and sewage history – round out what the building has to offer.