14889

 

II*  

Designated  

01/12/1995  

01/12/1995  

Pen-Rhos Engine House  

 

Wrexham  

Brymbo  

 

Pen-Rhos  

328569  

353225  

 

On the N side of the road running on the W side of the former Steel Works site, W of Pen-Rhos Farm.  

Industrial  

 

Late C18, almost certainly built for John Wilkinson, one of the leading iron-masters and technological innovators of the industrial revolution. It was probably built to house a Hornblower double cylinder engine, pumping for a coal mine. Jonathon Hornblower was an independent engine designer and builder of the period, who was developing the Newcomen engine into a modern form in competition with Boulton and Watt. The engine house was converted into a dwelling c1820, but later abandoned.  

Tall beam engine house. Battered walls of rough rubble with dressed stone quoins and dressings; roofless, but with moulded kneelers to gable copings, and brick stacks on the two gable ends, added when the building was converted into a dwelling. Beam arch high in bob-wall to S gable, partially blocked to convert to domestic window; semi-circular with dressed stone voussoirs. Small doorway to lower right in this gable. Remains of what may have been a square stack to the E.  

 

Listed as an exceptionally rare survival of a C18 beam engine house, dating from a period when the design of the steam engine was rapidly evolving. Scheduled Ancient Monument De 203.