Glasgow’s Hydraulic Power System Access Plate A4 Mounted Print
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This print shows an access cover embedded in a Glasgow street with the letters H and P on either side of a central keyhole. Such plates mark the routes where cast-iron pipes, with inch-thick walls, once carried high pressure water under there city’s streets to power machines and lifts in workshops and buildings across Glasgow. Built in 1895, Glasgow was the only city in Scotland, and one of only four in the UK, to have such a system. At the time, it was a ground-breaking method for providing centralised power, meaning that each individual location no longer needed its own steam engines to provide localised power. Instead, water was pressurised using massive steam engines at a pumping station on High Street in central Glashow, and from here it was sent through thirty miles of pipes to locations all over the city. At its peak in the early 1900s, it supplied more than 200,000 gallons of high pressure water per year. However, despite its revolutionary nature, it was soon superseded by electricity as a major source of centralised power, and the system was finally closed down in 1964. Now pretty much all that remains of this more or less forgotten power system are these distinctive access covers embedded in the city’s streets.
The print itself is 7.25 inches by 9 inches (18.5 cm by 23cm), and it comes mounted in a white 1.5 inch (3.5 cm) mount with a total size of 10 inches by 12 inches (25.5 cm by 30.5cm).
