Improvements in drinking water

Following the cholera epidemic of 1832, the city built a new pumping station upstream from Exeter at Pynes in order to provide unpolluted drinking water for the city. The engine house supplied a new reservoir high above the city centre at Danes Castle. It was built in the Norman style fashionable in the 1830s and 1840s. At first it was powered by water but this proved inadequate and in 1856 a new steam engine was installed.

The view by William Cheeseman was painted in or shortly after 1856; on the right a train leaves St David's.

The building no longer survives.

Acknowledgments: RAM Museum