15. Lancashire Boiler House under construction. This photo is full of interest, especially the excavation going on in the middle foreground, which is of the nascent wet pit comprising the turbine condenser cooling water supply pit and the effluent wet pit which collected from the mainshaft drain below the basement floors. Both wet pits went down to below the level of the river bed. The turbine condenser cooling water was taken from one of two pipes in the river bed, one facing upstream the other downstream, these were swapped according to the state of the tide, one for intake the other for discharge, the changeover controlled by valves operated from the metal floor over the pit. In my time this was too corroded to be safe to explore, with a possible 30+ foot drop into whatever water / mud remained in the pit. I had seen drawings relating to this original system in the drawing office. Later water intake was made at Medway pump house, and the cooling water supplied to a sump under the later electrical workshop in east mill adjacent to the turbine house, return water discharged into a tall collecting pot under a metal pent roof in the corner of no 1 conveyor. This pipework, though unused became the source of a funny story which I’ll relate at a later time. I have demolition pictures of the sump being broken open in the final days of the mill – having warned my brother that such a pit existed, as I did not know whether it was appreciated to be there by then.
The derrick has been ballasted securely with stacks of bricks, and appears to be being used to lower the V skip bodies into the wet pit to remove spoil. The two men at the base of the derrick jib appear to be wearing uniform, potentially army surplus, the man in the large cap, waist coat and leather gaiters is presumably the gaffer. The NG railway track crosses the wet pit excavation on way beams and has planks in the two-foot for pedestrians, as the skips are mainly hand propelled (though petrol locos appear in other photos). Coal bunkers in progress on the right. From the hook dangling in one of the frame openings it looks like 2mc annexe bridge crane is in situ.
