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American Church Berlin

Luther Church, Schöneberg, Berlin, Germany

Public transport in Berlin has several layers. 

There are buses, though in two visits I’ve only ever boarded one.  Rail is faster and more comfortable – trams in the former East Berlin, alongside the U-Bahn (underground railway) and the S-Bahn (overground railway).  Some services duplicate each other’s routes in places, and I found it easier to rely on signage at stops and on vehicles than to try to interpret the incompatible maps.  Ticketing is simple:  the day ticket [tageskarte] offers the run of the system.

I like to take time in any big city simply to hop on a bus, tram or train and see where it goes.  Serendipity takes over at such a point. 

With a couple of hours to spare one afternoon I took a westbound U2 train, trusting that I’d see something interesting when it eventually surfaced outside the central area.  Sure enough, shortly before the train entered Bülowstraße station it passed close by a spectacular brick Gothic church. 

The line went underground shortly afterwards, so I left the train at Wittenbergplatz and backtracked.  Bülowstraße station is a fine Art Noveau structure dating from 1902, part of the city’s first U-bahn route, designed by Bruno Möhring (1863-1929). 

Train services were severed when the Berlin Wall was built, and subsequently the station opened in 1980 as a bazaar and music restaurant which became a vibrant centre for the city’s Turkish community.  The tracks within the trainshed were covered over, and for a few months a vintage streetcar shuttled along the viaduct between Bülowstraße station and a flea-market at Nollendorfplatz station.  The station reopened in 1993.

The tall spire of the church I’d spotted is immediately visible from the street outside the station, though the building itself is difficult to photograph because of the surrounding trees.

It was originally built as the Luther Church [Lutherkirche] (1894), a rich and complex design by Johannes Otzen (1839-1911).  It’s a cross between the Scandinavian Church in Liverpool and the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras. 

The external detail is of the highest quality, though it’s one spire short of a full set of turrets because of wartime bombing, and the interior, rebuilt in 1958-59, is simple and tasteful:  American Church in Berlin – Church in Berlin (foursquare.com)

The church is occupied by the American Church Berlin [https://www.americanchurchberlin.de].  Their pre-war building at Nollendorfplatz was destroyed in 1944, though a vestige survives as a monument. 

If ever I return to Berlin it’ll be at the top of my list to revisit, preferably in the morning when the sun will be better placed, and if possible in winter when the trees are bare.

The Leawood Pump

Leawood Pump, Cromford Canal, Derbyshire

There are two reasons why the Cromford Canal terminates at Cromford:  Sir Richard Arkwright was prepared to invest in the waterway in order to secure cheap, easy transportation for his cotton mills, and he had built his water-powered factories at Cromford to take advantage of two reliable sources of water – the Bonsall Brook and the Cromford Moor Sough, a lead-mine adit draining the ore-field below Wirksworth.  Its water emerged at a constant year-round temperature of 52°F so that the upper section of the canal hardly ever froze in winter. 

Sir Richard Arkwright would have preferred the canal to take water from the River Derwent above Masson Mill, presumably to protect the supply to his mills at Cromford.  Instead, after the sough-water had powered the mills it entered the canal through a culvert at Cromford Wharf, later supplemented by an open channel to a second basin.

Soon after the opening of the Cromford Canal, reservoirs were constructed at the watershed between the Amber and Erewash Valleys, at Butterley, Butterley Park (drained in the late 1930s) and Codnor Park, to supply the Nottingham Canal by way of the flight of locks from Codnor Park to Langley Bridge.

The lead miners ultimately needed to extract ore from below the level of the Cromford Moor Sough and in 1772 began to dig the Meerbrook Sough, a lead-mine adit which drains into the River Derwent just north of Whatstandwell.

When the Meerbrook Sough opened circa 1836 it deprived the Cromford Canal of the dependable supply of thermal water from the older Cromford Moor Sough, and obliged the Canal Company to construct the Leawood Pump

Designed by Graham & Co of Elsecar, South Yorkshire and completed in 1849, the pump is a Cornish-type engine located beside the aqueduct over the River Derwent, lifting water thirty feet from the river during the weekend hours when the water-mills downstream were closed. 

The stone chimney, 95 feet high, has a cast-iron crown with a Venturi device to improve the draught. 

The existing locomotive-type boilers were manufactured by the Midland Railway and installed in a specially built extension to the engine house in 1904. 

After years of neglect the engine was restored to working order in 1979.

The pump house is open to visitors from Easter to October:  https://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/leisure/countryside/countryside-sites/wildlife-amenity/leawood-pumphouse.aspx.