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BENEATH THE WATER TOWER

The Graylingwell Heritage Project has been a community based heritage and arts programme located in Chichester, West Sussex.

The original Victorian buildings had a central boiler house with the water tower which is, after the Cathedral spire, by far the tallest building in Chichester. And if you go up to the Trundle and look down on Chichester, the only two buildings you can see are the Cathedral spire and the Graylingwell water tower.

The base of the water tower was the central boiler house and there was a network, a sort of ring, of corridors linking all the wards. Below the corridors was a basement subway and all the heating pipework ran through that. The heating was done by steam, so the boilers generated steam, which was then circulated round through the subways. Each ward block had its own installation that heated hot water for radiators, so it was quite a forward-thinking system, but it was quite expensive to run because you have to be much more careful with steam. It’s much more dangerous if you had a leak than hot water, so it was quite an expensive system to maintain. - John Wilton

 

 

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