Secret Ironbridge: Compressor house

If you walk down Wellington Road in Coalbrookdale, just past the Coalbrookdale Inn and the junction with Church Hill, you can see an industrial building with a flat roof and (what appears to be) four metal mushrooms growing out of the top.

This building was the compressor house for the Coalbrookdale Works. The compressors were water-cooled (compressing air generates a huge amount of heat) and the heated water was pumped through the mushroom domes onto the flat roof to allow it to naturally cool, before draining back down to the compressors below to repeat the cycle. I can vividly remember as a child, when visiting my Aunty who lived nearby, passing by this building and seeing the hot water gushing from the domes, with plumes of steam rising from the rooftop as it cooled.

The compressor house is included with the Erecting Shop and Assembly Shop as a listed building. These buildings date from 1879, although it is likely that the compressor house was a later addition. Recently, there was a planning application to modify the building for residential use (as part of a much larger plan to redevelop the Coalbrookdale Works site) which would have meant the loss of the rooftop water tank, and hence any indication of its past function. Fortunately, on appeal, the Secretary of State’s inspectorate made it quite clear that this was not acceptable and so, for the time being, the compressor house remains.

It may be coincidental, but Heras security fencing and unmanaged undergrowth now mask the view of the compressor house from the road. I managed to get this shot through the fencing and, with a bit of post-processing, cleared the view. I have also added a bit of steam in a nod towards my childhood memory.