Geograph - photograph every grid square

The museum was previously at the Abbey Pumping Station in Leicester used to pump sewage to treatment works at Beaumont Leys, and was opened in 1891. The grand Victorian building, designed by Stockdale Harrison (city architect in 1890) and beautifully decorated beam engines were a cause of great civic pride. The four steam engines were built in Leicester by Gimson and Company and today are rare examples of Woolf compound rotative beam engines. It continued pumping Leicester's sewage until 1964, and then underwent renovation. It opened as a museum in 1972.