Stowmarket Museum of East Anglian Life
This is a splendid museum spread around a large site, the central Abbots Hall Barn houses a variety of farming vehicles, tools and equipment. Nearby buildings house a comprehensive selection of domestic bygones. Alton watermill and Eastbridge windpump plus a number of other re sited buildings such as cart lodges a corrugated tin chapel and a blacksmiths forge have been added.
The re sited 'Boby' building houses trade and industry exhibits from coopering to printing , some engines including the only surviving pair of Burrell Ploughing engines (No's 776 and 777), a Burrell s/c GP traction engines No 3399 and various portables are steamed periodically. A pair of internal combustion engined Walsh and Clarke ploughing engines are also operated regularly. The 1857 Wilkins Grasshopper Beam engine from Coombs Tannery is now on site (and may be rebuilt by now) and a small Tangye inverted vertical single cylinder engine is on 'dead' display. The jewel of the collection is an unusual single cylinder horizontal mill engine, attributed to Whitmore and Binyon of Wickham Market, the only survivor from this maker and originally installed in Ruben Rackhams watermill in Wickham Market.
From the back it appears a fairly ordinary horizontal, with a bayonet type frame and disc crank
Moving round, the disc crank and bored tunnel crosshead guide with (on the far right) a jet condenser and air pump driven off the piston tail rod give it a distinct East Anglian look with some Robey or Marshall type characteristics.
Moving to the front and very non British practice becomes apparent with relatively small, fully cleaded cylinder with deep drawn or spun domed end cover and atop the cylinder a single central valve block and uncommon governor.
From behind the condenser the oddball nature of this engine becomes fully apparent with the centrally mounted valve block and two eccentric rod drive to two swinging links, the upper operating a mechanism below the governor which looks like some form of lifted or tripped drop valve, presumably to control the cut off point of steam admission and perhaps timing it, the lower operating a semi rotating cylindrical valve which appears to distribute steam to either end of the cylinder alternately.
There being no visible exhaust valving below the cylinder, the top mounted valve being unlikely to give either adequate condensate drainage or be sufficiently thermally efficient if a combined admission and exhaust valve and with the broad unlagged belt onto which the sloping exhaust pipe is connected, leads me to conclude this may well be a uniflow engine, where the exhaust is led through a centrally positioned ring of ports like a two stroke i/c engine and any remaining steam is re compressed keeping the admission ends of the cylinders at a high temperature, thereby reducing condensation and a consequent loss of efficiency.
A close up of the valve gear shows the top linkage operating a lift or trip mechanism for the vertically mounted valve in the bonnet with the small brass plate fixed to it and integral with the governor, the lower apparently operating a cylindrical valve with the 'wings' enclosing the steam passages just visible through the lagging. The exhaust pipe flange and elbow painted blue.
I have so far been unable to find any definite identification of this type of valvegear but the whole front end of the engine has a European (Belgian or Dutch) look to it and any detail information would be gratefully received, particularly if anyone has ever seen it dismantled or has a diagram of it's internal workings.
Whitmore and Binyon supplied a number of larger mill engines which featured Koenig's governing and drop valve gear, so they were no strangers to innovative design and contact with European practice (like Davey Paxman in Essex who produced engines with a highly efficient valve and governing system by Lenze) East Anglian engine builders and designers have been largely overlooked but from remaining evidence the use of highly efficient designs was quite common, in a county with no local fuel all coal would have to be shipped in to the main ports and then transhipped into wherries, barges or lighters for movement inland on shallow rivers or navigations adding to it's cost, so efficiency was important to the power hungry Victorian mill and factory owners who may have been a little more adventurous in adopting unusual engine designs than those with a ready supply of fuel at hand.
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