EDWARD ELLINGTON: BORN 1845
HYDRAULIC POWER

British hydraulic engineer who pioneered the development of urban-scale hydraulic power distribution systems. One of the founders of the London Hydraulic Power Company.

The company transmitted water power through a vast network of hydraulic mains to thousands of hotels, shops, offices, mansion blocks, hotels, docks and factories all across London. Among the more exotic uses of water power were the rising stages in West End theatres, for hwhich the silence of operation was particularly valuable.

With improvements in electric motors, hydraulic power becase extinct during the 20th century. However the underground pipes found a new use as ducts for telephone and data networks.

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Edward Ellington was a British hydraulic engineer who pioneered the development of urban-scale hydraulic power distribution systems. He was managing director of the Hydraulic Engineering Co of Chester and one of the founders of the London Hydraulic Power Company. He invented the hydraulic balance lift and the automatic injector fire hydrant.

The second son of a warehouseman, Ellington was born in Camberwell, and studied at Denmark Hill Grammar School before being articled to the Greenwich-based maritime engineering firm of John Penn in 1862. In 1869, he left Penn's company and London and entered into partnership with Bryan Johnson of Chester; Johnson and Ellington specialised in hydraulic machinery.

The following account of the London Hydraulic Power company was extracted, with acknowledgement and thanks, from the Subterranea Britannica website at www.subbrit.org.uk.

HYDRAULIC POWER - ITS NATURE AND USES

The secret of the utility of the hydraulic mains lies in the fact that water is virtually incompressible, and is therefore an ideal agent for transmitting power from one place to another. In London, water power was transmitted through a vast network of hydraulic mains to thousands of hotels, shops, offices, mansion blocks, hotels, docks and factories. Hydraulic power played an important part in the operations of lifts and cranes, but there were many other purposes for which the great pressure of the water was and still is used in industry.

Water power in London was controlled by the London Hydraulic Power Company, incorporated by Acts of Parliament between 1871 and 1903. Until it closed in 1977, the company supplied water at a pressure of 700 lb. per sq. in., day and night, all the year round, through some 150 (180 before the war) miles of cast-iron and steel hydraulic mains laid under the streets of London. This great labyrinth of power lines was not built in weeks or months, and the gradual spread of the silent tubes went on for more than half a century. The number of gallons of water pumped each week through the company’s mains in 1893 was 6,500,000; water pumped through the mains in 1933 averaged 32,000,000 gallons weekly. The mains were carried across the Thames at Vauxhall Bridge, Waterloo Bridge and Southwark Bridge. They cross under the river through Rotherhithe Tunnel and the Tower Subway beneath the Pool of London.

Before the LHP Company reached its zenith many dock and railway undertakings in London generated their own hydraulic power, using steam pumping engines and conspicuous ‘accumulator’ towers for storing this energy. A few such towers can still be seen, such as one close to the north end of Tower Bridge. Tower Bridge itself was operated by hydraulic power and the huge steam engines can still be seen in its engine room, now a museum.

Once the London Hydraulic Power Company’s mains spread out, covering much of London, and provided reliable service most users abandoned their own generators. Since the demise of the LHP Company the wheel has turned full circle, forcing users to install their own plant or convert to electric motors.

Applications for the enormous power of the hydraulic ram were manifold; it was used for cranes and lifts and could also be applied in presses for forging, stamping or flanging. At one time hundreds of such presses were in use throughout warehouses for baling cloth and paper, and for compressing scrap metal and other materials to facilitate transport.

THE LONDON HYDRAULIC POWER COMPANY

The Wharves and Warehouses Steam Power and Hydraulic Pressure Company was formed in 1871 to operate in London’s Docklands. In 1884 this became the London Hydraulic Power Company, providing hydraulic power over a wide area for the operation of lifts, cranes, presses and similar equipment. Central pumping plants supplied high pressure water to a pipe network, which was extended progressively up to the outbreak of war in 1939. For many years, up to the general adoption of small electric motors, hydraulic power was the simplest and most reliable means of operating a wide range of plant and machinery: at its peak, the Company was pumping more than 1.6 billion gallons of water annually at 700lb per square inch, supplying more than 8,000 machines. Wartime bomb damage, and the departure of many manufacturing firms from Central London, led to a decline in the Company’s activities postwar and despite a programme of electrification, pumping ceased in 1977. Control of the Company was acquired in 1981 by a group led by Rothschilds, which recognised the importance of the pipe network for the coming generation of communications systems. The network of 150 miles of pipes, ducts and conduits was sold in 1985 to Mercury Communications Ltd, now owned by Cable & Wireless Ltd, and since that time many miles of optical fibre cable have been laid in this network.

Replacing LHP Co. hydraulic mains in Piccadilly around 1930. The original cast-iron pipes with oval flange spigot and faucet joints are being removed and replaced with new steel pipes using Victaulic joints. Mercury Communications press photo.

Most of the pipes run just below the streets, although an important linking main ran through the old Tower Subway beneath the Thames (just west of Tower Bridge). Hydraulic power raised the curtain at the Royal Opera House, rotated the turntable at the Coliseum, raised lifts at the Bank of England (and thousands of other offices and flats) and opened dock gates on the Thames. In its heyday the company’s hundreds of workers pushed out up to 30 million gallons a week at 850 pounds per square inch from its six pumping stations. Then everyone from hotels, gasworks and rail depots to the Tate Gallery, Tower Bridge and West End theatres used the system wherever lifting power was needed.

Soon before the redundant piece of Victorian high technology was bought by a business consortium for £1.2 million, the company’s managing director, Albert Heron, who had been working for the company since 1935, was in command of just half a dozen staff, who carried out maintenance on the pipes, ranging in diameter from 2 inches to l0 inches. He told a reporter: “‘The cast-iron pipes are in excellent condition. The six-inch pipes are one inch thick”

The system covers an area from Kensington in the west to the East End docklands. Five pumping stations at Wapping, Bankside, Pimlico, City Road and East India Dock were closed, the sixth at Rotherhithe acting as the LHP Co. headquarters.

“All the machinery went for scrap, no one took any notice when we advertised it for sale,” said Mr. Heron. “Now a lot of industrial archeologists are crying crocodile tears.” The system’s death knell was sounded in the 1950s when the Port of London Authority and the Gas Board turned to other methods and the big rail depots moved from central London. “Now it’s like waiting for a rebirth,” said Mr. Heron. “I’m looking forward to business bucking up again.” [Adapted from The Free Weekender, 25th September 1981]

Engine room of the LHP Co. Grosvenor Road pumping station in Pimlico. The photo was taken in 1910, when the station was almost complete. The triple expansion steam engines drive high-pressure pumps. Mercury Communications press photo.

WHAT’S LEFT TO SEE

Not a lot is the simple answer. The Grade II*-listed Wapping Hydraulic Power Station on Wapping Wall has been transformed into a successful cultural amenity that has attracted international interest and has been compared favourably with the nearby Tate Modern. It was opened in October 2000 and belongs to the Women’s Playhouse Trust. It was built by the London Hydraulic Power Company in 1892 to supply hydraulic power for lifts and industrial uses and finally closed in 1976. When first built, the pumping station was steam driven. Two electric turbine pumps were added in 1923 and the whole station was modernised and converted to electricity in the 1950s. When the power station finally closed it was said to be the last of its kind in the world. The London Docklands Development Corporation was unable to find a suitable use that retained the original pumping equipment until the building’s purchase in 1998 by the Women’s Playhouse Trust. It now houses a restaurant, bar and exhibition space, enriching this formerly overlooked part of London.

Over the years GLIAS, the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society, has done a grand job recording hydraulic installations. A search of their website will bring up useful data.

Two installations that survived into the 1970s were lifts. At Union Bank Chambers, 61 Carey Street, WC2, the main passenger lift operated on a hydraulic ram, with electric press-button control. With passengers aboard the lift car traveled at normal speed but when called from rest, the ram propelled the car at a truly unnerving rate of knots. The Grosvenor Hotel, adjoining Victoria station, had a service lift of a very antique character. It still used rope control (you pulled up or down on the rope to start the lift and held it to stop). It operated at two speeds, depending on your pull. There was no self-levelling at each floor but auto-stop trips at the top and bottom of the shaft prevented over-run. Electrical interlocks had been retro-fitted to the lift car’s doors. After the LHP Company went out of business, the system was converted to oil, using an electrically driven compressor. Whether these two installations survive is unclear.