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
Random articles of interest
27 East street
MB My mum worked 27 east street and when it flooded in the 90s they found a big cellar and you could look down into an area which was like a tunnel
A singular happening lay behind the prosaic news on saturday that the chuichester and District League football fixture, Summersadale VS Boxgrove, had o be postponed owing to the ground on this hill suburb of Chichester being unfit.
DD I worked at 65 East Street when it was ''Hammick''s Bookshop'' (now Specsavers). We had a trapdoor in the middle of the floor that led down to a tunnel-shaped cellar that seemed to extend through the front of the shop and under the pavement outside. I didn''t see any evidence of it ever having joined another tunnel and imagine that perhaps there was once an opening in the pavement for deliveries.
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summersdale golf course and mr Stride
Between The Drive’s western and southern ends, Charles Stride built a private estate in c.1905 which included a nine hole golf course designed by James Braid, a lodge (Uplands), and a mansion (Woodland Place) with tree-lined grounds which, as Rew Lane, was developed in the late 1950s. The golf course was too close to the Goodwood course to be a commercial success and it was given up for gravel extraction immediately prior to the first World War, with a mineral branch line connected later to the Chichester-Midhurst railway. His golf course and pavilion is mentioned in https://golfsmissinglinks.co.uk/index.php/england/south-east/sussex/851-sus-summersdale-golf-club-chichester
Historically, to build a house with a simple cellar you would dig out the ground to a depth of around 6ft, the cellar walls would have been constructed with a lining of stone or brick and with a drain for water within the cellar. The floors would have been built up on crushed stone or sand to provide a level surface and paved, usually with flags. Brick paving became more common in later periods.
Max T I recall that there is a short length of tunnel (blocked off at both ends) under the old White Horse pub in South St. (now Prezzo restaurant, since 2005). Story in the pub was that it was part of a tunnel running from the Cathedral up to the Guildhall in Priory Park. Although the tunnel is there, I was never sure of its true purpose or the truth of its start / finish. Thought that it was worth mentioning it on here though.
