About Us
The Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum is a registered charity focusing on local transport and industry and is centred around a Grade II listed Victorian pumping station known as the 'Pumphouse'. The museum opened in 1997 when a group of local enthusiasts came together to restore the Grade II listed Marshall engines and form the Friends of the Pumphouse. However, the idea of operating a museum on the site was mooted as early as the 1970s shortly after the engines went out of service. The site was historically known as Low Hall Farm and an ancient manor house stood there for many centuries until it was bombed in WWII. The site was part of a much larger council depot part of which is still in existence today.
The area now occupied by the museum formed part of Low Hall Farm, purchased from the Bosanquet family by Walthamstow Urban District Council in 1875. Since the 14th century, the 200-acre site had been home to a moated country house, Low Hall Manor, which subsequently gave its name to the farm. The council acquired the land in order to build a sewage pumping station.
Despite the considerable antiquity of the site, nothing now remains above ground of the medieval manor house, nor of the 17th century building that succeeded it. Both were completely destroyed by a V1 'flying bomb' in 1944. In 1997 the Museum of London Archaeology Service excavated the site and a number of interesting artefacts were found.