The Great Laxey Wheel

Built in 1854 to pump water from the Glen Mooar part of the Great Laxey mines on the Isle of Mann, the Great Laxey Wheel, known as ‘Lady Isabella’, was a prodigious feat of engineering that found immediate popularity and remains one of the island’s most dramatic tourist attractions to this day. Designed by the engineer Robert Caseman and named after the wife of the Lieutenant-General of the island, the structure used water from mountain streams to drive the enormous water wheel which was connected to the pumps. The wheel is 77 feet in diameter (22 metres) and 6 feet wide, and was capable of pumping up to 250 gallons per hour from a depth of 1200 feet.

The wheel still operates but no longer pumps water. It is now the largest surviving wheel of its kind in the world.

Photographed by George Patterson of Ramsey.