Bressingham Steam and Gardens
Bressingham Steam & Gardens is a steam museum, gardens and garden centre located at Bressingham, west of Diss in Norfolk, England. The site has several narrow gauge rail lines and a number of types of steam engines and vehicles in its collection and is also the home of the national Dad's Army exhibition.[1]
The Gardens
The gardens were established by Alan Bloom MBE at Bressingham Hall. He moved to Bressingham in 1946, after selling his previous 36-acre (15 ha) site at Oakington in Cambridgeshire to raise the capital for the 220 acres (89 ha) in Norfolk, where he hoped to be both a farmer and a nurseryman.[2] He was a plant expert of international renown, particularly in the field of hardy perennials. He laid out the Dell garden with its well-known island beds. His son, Adrian Bloom, laid out the Foggy Bottom garden.
Much of the site is given over to commercial horticulture. There is a garden centre on the site, trading as Blooms of Bressingham, although the nurseries themselves are not open to the public. Bressingham Gardens and Steam Museum is an independent charitable trust. Alan Bloom had wanted to create his own trust in 1967, to ensure that the collection would not be dispersed to pay for death duties, but the laws of the time made this difficult, and after five years of negotiation, the museum was nearly handed over to the Transport Trust. However, the legislation governing private museums was relaxed just before the handover in 1971, and Bloom was able to create his own Trust and thus retain control of it because the collection was of historical and educational importance.[2]
The Narrow Gauge Lines
There are three railway lines which take visitors around the gardens:
The site also contains a short standard gauge section of track and standard gauge footplate rides are sometimes available to visitors.
Standard gauge steam locomotives
- GNR Class C2 4-4-2 No. 990 Henry Oakley. On static display, on loan from the National Railway Museum.
- GNR Large boiler Class C1 4-4-2 No. 251. On static display, on loan from the National Railway Museum.
- GER Class T26 2-4-0 No. 490. On static display, on loan from the National Railway Museum.
- LT&SR 79 Class 4-4-2T No. 80 Thundersley. On static display, on loan from the National Railway Museum.
- NSB 2-6-0 No 377 King Haakon VII. In working order, restored in 2006.
- LSWR B4 class No 102 Granville 0-4-0T. On static display.
- LB&SCR A1 class 0-6-0T No 662 Martello. Operational, usually on loan to other railways.
- "Peer Gynt". German-built Norwegian Army train used in the early 1950s. Found in a caved-in tunnel and restored, now on static display. Cannot be fully repaired due to the boiler being filled with asbestos.
Steam vehicles
A variety of steam vehicle are in the collection.[3]
Showman's Engines and Road Locomotives
Steam Engines Portable and others
- Burrell No. 2363 of 1901 Portable.
- E. Youngs Portable of 1910
- Tidman Centre Engine (fairground) No. 1891
- Merryweather Fire engine no. 3702
- Merryweather Fire pump of 1914
Steam Rollers
- Burrell No. 3962 Boxer of 1923 reg no. PW 1714
- Burrell No. 3993 Buster of 1924 reg no. CF 5646
- Robey (company) 4 ton Tandem Steam Roller No. 42520 Barkis built in 1925 reg No. FE 7632.
Steam Tractors / Traction
- Garrett 5 ton Steam Tractor No. 34641 Bunty, built in 1924 reg no. CF 5913.
- Sentinel 11 ton Timber Tractor No. 8756 Brutus, built in 1933 reg no. VN 4294.
- Burrell Traction engine No. 3112 Bertha of 1909 reg no. CF 3440
- Foster Traction engine No. 2821 Beryl of 1903 reg. no. BE 7448
- Fowler Traction engine No. 6188 Beulah of 1890 reg no. MA 8528
Steam Wagons
- Foden Steam Wagon No. 13708 of 1930 Boadicea reg no. VF 8862.
See also
References
- ^ Dads Army exhibition Retrieved 7 May 2009
- ^ a b Steam Engines at Bressingham, (1976), Alan Bloom, Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-10867-9
- ^ Old Glory Magazine No.229 feb 2009 page 48 (Museum collections listing)
External links
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Operational railways
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Heritage railways: England · Scotland · Wales · Northern Ireland · Isle of Man · Channel Islands
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