On the last Sunday of most months it’s possible to visit the Eastney Engine Houses here in Portsmouth, and in May, 2014 that’s what we did.
The bulk of Portsmouth sits on Portsea Island, a very flat island not very high above sea level – our house near the centre of the island is at probably one of the highest points and would gain beachfront views if the sea levels rose a handful of metres – and generally suffers from a lack of natural drainage as a result. Between 1865 and 1904 Colonel John Frederick Crease and Sir Frederick Bramwell oversaw construction of the pumping engine houses that would help the gravity-fed drainage system pull sewage into holding locations until such time as it could be ejected with the tide. The engines were officially switched on in 1887 and were still kept operational as backups until as late as 1954. Following restoration work the engine houses at Eastney were opened as museums in 1972.
If you like the steampunk vibe then you’ll enjoy any visit where Victorian era engineering is on show and Eastney Beam Engine didn’t disappoint here at all. Seeing the machinery in operation was mesmerising given the smoothness of the operation and generally quiet pumping taking place.
At some point after this visit I did some pseudo-HDR photo processing of a couple of pictures inside the Eastney Beam Engine House, likely at the time to share them on Google+ at the time. They’re below, and they were done with some fairly basic faked exposure variations in monochrome tones stacked on top of one another.
