G Mills & Co Fire Pump

Just wanted to share this post of another one of the engines that’s ran at Bradford Industrial Museum & is in motion daily. It’s now motor driven rather than originally powered by steam but at least it’s still displayed and looked after.

So this steam pump also called a donkey engine is a Horizontal duplex rotative steam fire pump which was used at Victoria Mills here in Bradford and made by George Mills of Radcliffe around 1880.

Victoria Mills was built in 1873 by Henry Mason as one of the many textile mills back then in Shipley, Bradford. It’s still here but is now offices and residential lets. These engines played a vital role in textile mills to fight fires as mobile fire fighting services weren’t as established as they are now. Often the firemen who operated these engines were also mill workers too. The large vessel over the pump many people ask me contains a quantity of air to cushion the intermittent pressure of the pumps to ease the water pressure on the cast iron mains stopping them from cracking. The site is close to the nearby river and the canal so had a sufficient water source. It was a fully integrated mill and processed all stages of textile production to meet englands rapidly growing market and exported worldwide.