A phone call from Mr Douglas Ross, the Town Clerk of Trowbridge on the 15 th of January 1992 to Jill Taylor the Director of Coldharbour Mill was the beginning of the most interesting challenge in my engineering career. The mill museum had a beam engine house with no engine in it whereas Trowbridge Council had a beam engine on its hands but could not justify the expense of housing it with a boiler to run it. The Science Museum had been instrumental in saving the engine from the scrap man when the brewery was demolished and stipulated that when it was erected it must be run on steam, not air, motored electrically or as a static display. stipulated that when it was erected it must be run on steam, not air, motored electrically or as a static display.

The engine is probably the only remaining beam engine built by Kittoe and Brotherhood at their works under the railway arches at 53-56 Compton Street, Islington, London, in 1867. Peter Brotherhood was the son of Rowland who amongst other things was contracted to Brunel working on the Great Western Railway as a civil engineer employing up to a thousand men digging the famous Sonning cutting. It was Rowland and his men who Isambard called on to cut out the masonry when the Great Britain had to be freed from the dock at Bristol in December 1884 after her launch. As you can see Peter Brotherhood was born in 1838 into a family deeply involved in the developing world of engineering of the day. He worked in his fathers railway works at Chipenham, the G.W.R. works and then in the employ of  Maudslay Sons and Field in Lambeth, the foremost engineering company in the country. He went into partnership with Mr. G. D. Kittoe during 1867, so this beam engine may well be the very first one built by the company. Mr. Kittoe retired in 1871and Peter`s next partner was Mr. Hardingham until 1878 when Peter became sole proprietor of the company which still exists today under his name in Peterborough.

The engine was built for the Albion Brewery of Mann Crossman and Paulin in Whitechapel in London. By the way it made a couple of brief appearances in the  recent television programme “How London Was Built” presented by Adam Heart-Davis in the episode about entertainment and the brewing industry. Later on in its history to increase its power supply the brewery installed a 24”x 42” horizontal single  cylinder “pusher” engine on the other end of the same crankshaft built by Robert Morton of Stockton-on-Tees. Both engines ran on full boiler pressure with the exhaust steam   

used in the brewery for heating the mash tuns etc. Power was taken off by large cast iron gears, one wheel having cast iron teeth and the next having wooden cogs, alternating thus up through the building. This we are told gave a relatively quiet and smooth running system. The engine was in regular use until 1934 when a cracked bedplate forced its retirement. Those of you familiar with casting design will notice the sharp internal corners in the bedplate and other castings around the engine thus making them susceptible to localised stress and cracking.

The engine was offered by Watney Mann to Trowbridge Town Council in June 1978 for their new museum. Dismantled by Historic Steam Ltd., part of Kew Bridge Engine Trust, and stored at Bradford-on Avon. In January 1989 it was moved to Trowbridge and later to Westbury where we saw it for the first time on a disused trailer under a tarpaulin at Rygor`s Transport yard.

It was donated free of charge to Coldharbour Mill Trust but needed transporting to the mill. The Friends of Coldharbour Mill could see that this was an opportunity not to be missed and paid the £1070.00 needed to get the engine parts to their final home.

Early April 1992 saw the engine parts arrive by Wheelers Transport in the mill yard, as usual there were those that said “that`s brilliant” and some said “it`ll never run!”- well you can`t please everyone all the time. We were told      

that the bearing brasses and stop valve were still being looked after at Kew Bridge so Jill Taylor the museum director, and myself went up there to collect them, and were treated to a good look round by Ron Plaster who was one of the team that rescued the engine.

That was early May and on the 6th June we picked up the Beddoes displacement lubricator and nameplate from Trowbridge Museum.