Science & Engineering

The museums, the machines and the men and women who worked it out: laboratories kept as they were, beam engines under steam, the tunnel, the barrier, the roofs, and the plaques on the houses where the ideas came.

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Markfield Beam Engine and Museum

A hundred-horsepower Victorian beam engine in its own pumping house by the Lea, steamed on open Sundays.

Engines & pumpingOpen days onlyGo inside

Photo by Julian Osley, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Also in Museums.

Wood Brothers of Sowerby Bridge built the compound beam engine in 1886 to pump Tottenham's sewage to the Lea Valley outfall, and it did so until 1964; the engine house survived, the volunteers restored the engine to steam, and on open days it turns over slowly under its cast-iron beam with the flywheel humming. Free, small and run by people who know every bolt; the park around it is the old works.

Where
Markfield Road, West Green, N15 4QA
Nearest station
Tottenham Hale · 9 min walk

Second and fourth Sundays, 10:00–15:30, and most bank holiday Mondays; steaming days to 16:00

Free, donations welcome; on steaming days the engine runs at 12:30 and 14:30.

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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