Eaton Weir, Anchor Island, Buscot, Oxfordshire

Oxford Archaeology undertook a programme of archaeological investigation and recording on the surviving walls and other remains of a water wheel pit at Anchor Island, to the south-west of Kelmscott, on the border between Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. The site forms part of the Buscot Estate and was commissioned by The National Trust in advance of proposed repair and consolidation works to the structure.
The substantial remains survive from a pair of waterwheels which were installed in the 1860s to pump water from a well adjacent to the Thames around Buscot estate as part of major agricultural improvement works and an ambitious irrigation scheme created by Robert Campbell the new
owner of Buscot Park.
The principal surviving visible structures on which the recording focussed are two brick walls which formed the pit for one of the waterwheels; the immediately adjacent pit has now been infilled, as has the main channel of water which was diverted from the river to power the wheels.
Each wall retains evidence of the former wheel including mountings, holding down bolts, guard plates, empty sockets and areas of collapse from former adjoining structures.
Although the remains of the pit form only a relatively minor structure they are of interest as evidence of Victorian attempts to apply principles of industrial efficiency and modernisation to agriculture. They are also of interest as a wider example of the range of structures required by a great country estate as well as the fact that they are located less than a mile from Kelmscott
Manor, William Morris's important country house. Kelmscott was Morris's house during the period towards the end of the 19th century when the waterwheel was in operation.
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