The Limehouse Hydraulic Accumulator

The Hydraulic Accumulator at Limehouse

Walking along the canal the other day I spotted a man sitting on the balance arm of a lock and typing away on an old-fashioned, manual typewriter. I used a similar machine for years until I moved onto a daisy-wheel, electric typewriter. These long standing technologies were swept away when computers came along - though we still use the QWERTY keyboard. The last company making typewriters has closed.

There are other examples of once widespread technologies that have largely vanished. Hydraulics may still be very important in control systems for machinery such as excavators.  However networks of hydraulic pipes no longer distribute power locally to drive machinery as they once did in the days before electricity was available.


Alongside the DLR viaduct behind the Limehouse Basin is an octagonal tower dating from 1869. This was built to regulate one of the first hydraulic power systems. The hydraulic system was installed to drive all the cranes, capstans and lock gates around the dock between the canal and the Thames.

Hydraulic systems use a liquid under pressure to drive machines. In the nineteenth century a central pumping station with steam engines kept the system topped up with water under pressure. A weight-loaded accumulator was used to regulate the pressure. Up the middle of the accumulator tower was a huge iron cylinder. Inside the cylinder a piston loaded with 80 tons of gravel pressed down on a reservoir of water.

None of this works any more and a spiral staircase cuts through the cylinder leading to a public viewing gallery. The tower is only open to the public occasionally, for example during the London Open House weekend.