Spotswood Pumping Station
Posted by: 
bucketeer
S 37° 49.868 E 144° 53.702
55H E 314756 N 5810833
The Spotswood Pumping Station was built in the late nineteenth century as a key component of Melbourne's first centralised sewerage system.
Waymark Code: WM87DG
Location: Victoria, Australia
Date Posted: 02/13/2010
Views: 19
The Spotswood Pumping Station completed in 1896, was initiated by the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works in 1892. Designed in the French classical revival style by engineer Christian Kussmaul, and constructed by contractor AG Shaw, the complex consists of a symmetrical arrangement of two pumping houses, with their associated boiler and coal bunker buildings, and two polygonal straining well houses which are constructed of red brick with contrasting cream detailing around three courtyards. The entrance to the central yard is flanked by imposing mansard towers.
A unique collection of steam engineering equipment as well as tools, furniture and other objects, remain at the complex. Spotswood ceased operation in 1965.
The former Spotswood Pumping Station now managed by Scienceworks Museum (
visit link)
The station is unique in Australia as an intact ensemble of buildings, sewerage pumping machinery, and objects. In terms of its integrity and rarity the complex has no parallel in Australia.
The Spotswood Pumping Station is technically important as an ambitious exercise in engineering that supplied the force to move millions of gallons of the city's sewage each day. Its 1901 English, Hathorn Davey steam engine, one of the most advanced pumping engines in the world at that time, is possibly the oldest extant engine of its type in Australia or Britain. With the 4 locally-made Austral Otis engines, the pumping installations at Spotswood form one of the largest collections of engines and devices functionally related to an industrial site in Australia and Britain. The station has further technical importance for its ability to demonstrate the processes of sewage treatment in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the machinery and associated tools chart the technological life of the complex from steam power to electricity.
Spotswood Pumping Station has significant associations with the benefits its sewerage system brought to Melburnians; basic sanitation, and a dramatic improvement to its citizen's public health.
*Information provided by the Heritage Victoria website*