Friday 28 March 2008

Ethics

The Provision of Steam

Without doubt, the greatest challenge facing this Society at the moment is the provision of steam for the Marshall engine. In making this provision there will be many discussions as to what constitutes an effective preservation policy.

Presently, we have two wasting (and probably quite unique) Marshall built, Cornish boilers, which, without any preservation measures, will ultimately return to their natural state, to be survived only by the engineering bricks that supported them.

Dennis Guillemard stated that ‘ Preservation has the goal of extending the life expectancy of cultural heritage’ [Guillemard, 1992] and in some respects, restoration will be necessary in order to effectively extend the life expectancy of the boilers and by definition, preserve them.

If the nature of that restoration work becomes so extensive as to materially alter the identity of the object being preserved, then some may question the validity of undertaking such a restoration programme. What degree of restoration work should be allowed to take place and still permit the boilers to be ‘badged’ as Marshall’s work, as opposed to being described as a replica?

Another argument would suggest that restoration work is not unlike extensive repair and maintenance that might have been undertaken when the boilers were in active service. In practice, the boilers would probably have been replaced or superseded before such extensive repairs became necessary. The principle does however remain.

There are many arguments that are of a purely practical nature. Such arguments may suggest that it would be folly to restore a boiler of that nature which is going to be prohibitively expensive to run, difficult to maintain and will continue to be subject to the very conditions that brought about the deterioration in the first instance. If the objective is to solely provide steam for the Marshall engine, then there are greener and more cost effective ways of doing it!

If you have a viewpoint on this topic, then please feel free to share it. To facilitate this I have set up a blog where you can record and discuss with others, your thoughts on the matter. The address is:

http://ofpeps.blogspot.com/

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

With regards to the Marshall boilers; we are all aware that there are more efficient, less labour intensive ways of producing steam, but the Marshall boilers are as much part of the pumping station installation as the steam engine or the very bricks and mortar of the pump house. There is mention of this not being a Green alternative, but as the steam engine will only be run for a few days a year and will not actually do a job of work any more, I think this argument has no founations. As all of Marshalls' boilersmiths employed during the construction of these Cornish boilers are now sadly just memories, it is not possible to repair the boilers and call it Marshalls' work, therefore I suggest the only way forward is to repair or replace parts of the boiler remaining totally sympathetic to Marshalls' boiler making skills. Thus bringing the pumping station alive again. I agree that a packaged boiler would be a quick and easy method of providing steam for the engine but would, to make an analogy be like "looking at an old relative in an iron lung".

Graham said...

Since our aims are to present the public with a snap shot of the sites 200 year history and the 100 year history of the pumping station, the picture we present is bound to be a little blurred around the edges as we do not have a every little thing that happened on record. So to provide steam for the Marshall from a packaged boiler would not be out of keeping with our aims, to restore and operate the original boilers is a long term goal with the need to find large sums of money to achive this. So long as we present a reasonable representation of how the station was during its working life, then we have achived our aims.

Simon said...

Having lived in Owston Ferry for 10 years and always been fascinated by the "strange old building" that nobody seemed to know much about, I am delighted that it is now to be cared for. Personal preference would be to restore the existing boilers rather than bolt on a modern adjunct.

Is there a fund raising effort going on? How can I make contact with it?