Dartmouth Museum and the nearby Visitor Centre are a mecca for fans of early steam engines that powered pumping stations.

Chair of the Museum Mike Rowley explained:

“We call them the machines that changed the world, because these engines powered pumping stations and also factory mechanical engines and machines that drove the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom through the 18th century.

“It wasn't really until 1780 that Newcomen's invention of 1712 was improved upon and that's why people until recently have tended to think that James Watt invented the steam engine when in fact it was Newcomen, the Dartmouth engineer and blacksmith

“Dartmouth Museum has a number of models from the David Hulse Collection which all work and are powered now by electricity.”

Mike tells us, that’s not all: “We actually think we've got Newcomen's walking stick which was given to us by his family who discovered it in the back of one of their wardrobes and in the head of the stick is a letter to his wife dated 1727, shortly before he died.

Mike told us more: “He was born in Foss Street in a house called Hawley Hoo, which was down towards the mill pond on the right-hand side, on what would be the north-eastern side, in 1664.

“He was Christened in St Saviour's Church in February 1664.

“After serving an apprenticeship as an ironmonger in Exeter, he came back and established an ironmongery practice in Dartmouth.

Ironmongers in those days made most of the ironmongery that they sold.

“He was selling things like shovels and tools and various metal components to the mines of Devon and Cornwall and to the local population as well.

“He was a man who had a great understanding of the mines as Mike explained:

“Once you get down so far underground, you get well below the water table, the mines will fill up with water.

“So he knew there was a problem there and he and his business partner Cully, who was a plumber and glazier worked for some years trying to devise a way of pumping that water out.

‘The first engine was installed in Tipton in what was then South Staffordshire and you might ask why there?

“Why not the copper and tin mines of Devon and Cornwall?

Mike said: “Thomas Newcomen was a committed Baptist and back in the 1600s if you were a non-conformist you were excluded from formal education and the professions so he was educated within the Baptist community and went into an apprenticeship

“Also there were no roads west of Exeter, they were just pack horse tracks in the 1600s.

Because he was a Baptist he would have known the preacher Flavel after which the Flavel Arts Centre is named.

Across the road at The Dartmouth Visitor Centre you will find the Newcomen Memorial Engine which is sometimes called the Coventry Canal Engine.

It was made in 1725 and was first used for mine drainage and later canal supply.

Newcomen’s engine is the world’s oldest surviving steam engine.