61. Clay bunkers.
The bunker floor has been laid, this is at 8′ OD, below the machine house floor level (16′ OD), and behind can be seen the excavation for the tunnel where the draw off hatches were and the passage to the blungers which were to the right and lower at )’ OD, next to the boiler house wet pit / pump pit.
Some photos from the demolition, firstly in the under floor passage, for barrowing clay from the draw off hatches to the left (deep shadow) to the blungers behind the camera. Secondly two views of the passage from ground level after the roof (beaterfloor ground floor) had been removed, showing the draw off hatches, and behind the breezeblock wall closing the opening, is the wet pit pump pit. In the room next to the bunkers and above the blungers (upper opening in 733) if my memory serves, was the clay consistency regulator, a sort of see-saw of a horizontal U shaped pipe through which the slurry flowed via flexible connections, as the density increased the see-saw would tilt to the closed end of the U and so actuate an air servo to increase the dilution water, and vice versa. By the 70s clay was no longer man handled in barrows but washed down by a water jet from a platform inside the upper reaches of the clay bunker. One operator was an Italian by the name of Esposito.
