Flame gulper!
Ness Gardens again will step back in time on Bank Holiday Monday 25th May, and run this rare & ingenious engine, ‘The Ness Gardens Flame Gulper’.
In October 2006 the engine was discovered in the loft, damaged and unusable, at some stage a catastrophic mechanical failure had occurred.
In 1905 Arthur Bulley, who originally founded the gardens in 1878 purchased an Atmospheric Engine to drive light machines, such as seed cleaning machines. Vacuum Engines are also known as Flame Gulpers. Flame Lickers or Fire Eating Engines. This type of engine was devised by Henry Wood who filed a patent in 1758. The first working engine was built by Sir George Caley in 1807, but it was the improvements suggested by Robert Mann Lowne, in 1844-1929 which made the engine successful.
At Ness we were fortunate to have dedicated volunteers who decided to try to restore this special engine to see if it could be brought back to life! This was finally completed on 30th October 2006 when the repaired engine ran for the first time, and once again they will be on hand to give information and a little of the history to this specialised engine.
This will take place at hourly intervals from 11am until 3pm on the Bank Holiday Monday.
