The Claymills Pumping Engines Trust was incorporated in 1993 as a non-profit-making body to promote and preserve for the benefit of the public the nineteenth century Claymills Pumping Station complex including all buildings, engines and equipment situate at Meadow Lane, Stretton, Burton on Trent.
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Help us with getting our new Visitor Centre up and running!
We have a substantial grant from East Staffordshire Borough Council and some funding of our own - but costs keep going up and we need a bit more to be safe - we don't want to spend all our reserves as we may need those just to keep going in 2025!
What we are
Historic England say that 'Claymills is the best preserved and most complete Pumping Startion in England'. But we are a small museum run entirely by volunteers who have resrired the Pumping Station from derelict to fully working over the last 30 years.We now have four working beam engines and more than 30 smaller engines, all as used on site from 1885. We have the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service and several awards for the quality of restoration work we do, notably the Instriute oif Mechanical Engineers Heritage Award, and the Dorothea Restoration Award 2024 for work on our unique Pipe Drug. And we work hard with our Young Engineers scheme to bring younger people in to learn the skills we need.
We aim to keep our entry prices as low as we can, and we allow children up to 18 to go free, as we welcome families as well as steam enthusisats. That means we have to seek grants for development work - and we have been successful in that, especially where it comes to our engineering heritage.
What we need
But our visitor facilitities are woefully lacking - our gatehouse, shop, cafe and toilets are just not up to modern stanbdards, and until recently we had no prospect for improvement. But in 2024 we were successful in securing a grant from East Staffordshire Borough Council which we have been able to match with our own funds, to provide a new visitor building.
Why we are crowdfunding
Unfortunately, the grant we have is only sufficient to put up the building, not to fit it out. We need everything from entrance counters to displays screen, from shop fittings to display lighting, from microwave ovens to knives and forks, from new toilets to extractor fans. Our skilled volunteers can do the fitting, but we need financial support - around £30,000 - to do the job to a professional standard, and our reserves are already depleted - the cost of coal has tripled over the last two years, and for a working steam museum that is very diffcult.