THE GUN
6 June 2008
I don't know how many readers of this column are or once were fans of the novelist, C S Forrester. Those who were or are may remember a remarkable book of his called something like 'The Gun'.
Unsurprisingly, it's about a gun -- a massive wrought iron eighteenth century engine of destruction captured by Iberian guerrillas in the early nineteenth century and turned against the troops of the regular army that once owned it.
The vast power of the gun, and the vast effort that the guerrillas have to put into pulling it round the rough terrain, become the centre-piece of a magnificent story of courage, vanity and betrayal.
For some reason, this story -- half remembered from reading it forty years ago -- came back into my mind as I found myself hunched next to the Mayor of Sherborne, incongruously turning the handles that released the sluice-gates of the Castleton water-pump.
Below, as we turned the handles, the water came through the gates with increasing force. And above, slowly at first, but then with increasing speed the vast iron wheel of the pump began to turn. Its mass, the unstoppable force of its turning weight, and its threatening rumble as it turned on its axis, all echoed the power of the gun.
But of course the wheel had, from the start, a benign purpose. I am told it was installed in the 1830s, when the drinking of polluted river-water had become a national scandal. For ninety years, it contributed to the pumping of clean water from boreholes to the townspeople of Sherborne -- a monument to the durability and solidity of Victorian engineering.
And, of course, it was a monument to sustainability, using the renewable supply of river-water to pump an unending supply of clean water from the bore-hole without the use of fossil fuels -- all virtually without cost once the great wheel was engineered and installed.
What, you may ask, were the Mayor and I doing twiddling the knobs? And what had happened to the wheel between the early years of the twentieth century and today?
The answers to these two questions are connected with one another.
The mayor and I were twiddling the knobs because we were officially reopening this great pump after decades (almost a century) of disuse.
This act of reopening was made possible by a truly remarkable group of local, volunteer engineers and enthusiasts, who came together over thirty years. They rebuilt the fine stone housing of the wheel and pump. They restored equipment. They raised enormous sums of money. And finally, almost unbelievably, they lovingly recreated the great wheel itself.
There they -- or most of them -- were. Some now ancient, all now justly proud of an extraordinary work of re-creation.
As we listened to the wheel rumbling away. I reflected not only on the connection of ideas and feelings with its near-contemporary, Forrester's great gun of the Peninsular War, but also on the way in which history repeats itself. I wondered how long it would be before the scarcity, costs and risks of fossil-fuels drive us back to some modern version of these grand Victorian schemes for harnessing the renewable power of nature for the improvement of our quality of life..
Unsurprisingly, it's about a gun -- a massive wrought iron eighteenth century engine of destruction captured by Iberian guerrillas in the early nineteenth century and turned against the troops of the regular army that once owned it.
The vast power of the gun, and the vast effort that the guerrillas have to put into pulling it round the rough terrain, become the centre-piece of a magnificent story of courage, vanity and betrayal.
For some reason, this story -- half remembered from reading it forty years ago -- came back into my mind as I found myself hunched next to the Mayor of Sherborne, incongruously turning the handles that released the sluice-gates of the Castleton water-pump.
Below, as we turned the handles, the water came through the gates with increasing force. And above, slowly at first, but then with increasing speed the vast iron wheel of the pump began to turn. Its mass, the unstoppable force of its turning weight, and its threatening rumble as it turned on its axis, all echoed the power of the gun.
But of course the wheel had, from the start, a benign purpose. I am told it was installed in the 1830s, when the drinking of polluted river-water had become a national scandal. For ninety years, it contributed to the pumping of clean water from boreholes to the townspeople of Sherborne -- a monument to the durability and solidity of Victorian engineering.
And, of course, it was a monument to sustainability, using the renewable supply of river-water to pump an unending supply of clean water from the bore-hole without the use of fossil fuels -- all virtually without cost once the great wheel was engineered and installed.
What, you may ask, were the Mayor and I doing twiddling the knobs? And what had happened to the wheel between the early years of the twentieth century and today?
The answers to these two questions are connected with one another.
The mayor and I were twiddling the knobs because we were officially reopening this great pump after decades (almost a century) of disuse.
This act of reopening was made possible by a truly remarkable group of local, volunteer engineers and enthusiasts, who came together over thirty years. They rebuilt the fine stone housing of the wheel and pump. They restored equipment. They raised enormous sums of money. And finally, almost unbelievably, they lovingly recreated the great wheel itself.
There they -- or most of them -- were. Some now ancient, all now justly proud of an extraordinary work of re-creation.
As we listened to the wheel rumbling away. I reflected not only on the connection of ideas and feelings with its near-contemporary, Forrester's great gun of the Peninsular War, but also on the way in which history repeats itself. I wondered how long it would be before the scarcity, costs and risks of fossil-fuels drive us back to some modern version of these grand Victorian schemes for harnessing the renewable power of nature for the improvement of our quality of life..
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