Description and History of Site:-
Beam engine house of plain design with hipped roof. The engine was scrapped c1943. A house occupies the site of an upper pond which supplied the conduit to the Bailey Hall basin. A small house beside the engine house has recently been demolished as part of a residential conversion of the engine house. Thomas Bradley of Halifax was the Superintendant Engineer responsible for the whole of the works required for the Halifax branch of the Calder and Hebble Canal. Completed in 1828, it rose 100ft 7in by fourteen locks in just 1.75 miles. Owing to the interests of millowners alongside the Hebble Brook it was not possible to obtain water from that source above Salterhebble, and the entire water supply to the upper level at Bailey Hall, Halifax was led via a culvert from Sowerby Cut at a point below the bottom lock at Huddersfield Road Bridge, into a tunnel which carried the flow of water to a sump 109 feet deep beneath the engine house; from whence it was lifted into a second tunnel along which the water descended by gravity into the upper basin near SE 09835 24732. The engine was supplied by the Low Moor Company and remained in use until the canal's abandonment in 1942. Two ponds beside the bottom lock at SE 096787 22883 were created as settling tanks for a supplementary water supply taken from the Hebble Brook downstream of the last mill at Siddal Bottoms, and were intended to maintain the level of the Sowerby Cut. These ponds remain in operational use. The engine house was for many years occupied by a motor engineers, and has recently undergone conversion to residential use.

Further Reading and References:-
Charles Hadfield, Canals of Yorkshire and North East England, Volume 1, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1972, pp. 196-7

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Key Words :- canal pumping engine house motor engineer

Viewing the Site :- No public access. The pump house can be seen from the footpath alongside Oxford Lane.

Address :- Oxford Lane, Halifax, West Yorkshire, HX3 9AS
Grid Ref :- SE 09819 23650
Co-ordinates :- Lat 53.709184 , Long -1.852721
Local Authority :- Calderdale Council
Pre 1974 County :- Yorkshire - West Riding
Site Status :- Site extant - Protected status unknown
Site Condition :- Site refurbished to residential housing
Site Dates :- 1828 - 1942 canal abandoned
Record Date :- 8 August 2016

Copyright :- cc-by-nc-sa 4.0 © Peter Robinson