At its greatest extent, between 1884 and 1952, the complex consisted of two boiler houses with condensing engines, a chimney, coal cellars, workshop, cooling pond, leat, and an underground reservoir.

Situated on top of a naturally fissured chalk hollow, it provided vast quantities of water to the rapidly growing towns of Hove and its larger neighbour, the fashionable seaside resort of Brighton, for more than a century.

An industrial archaeologist offered to restore the buildings and machinery in return for a lease from the Brighton Water Corporation, and a charitable trust was formed to enable this.

Expertise developed by the Engineerium's employees and volunteers was exploited across the world: they founded museums, undertook restoration projects and trained young people in engineering heritage conservation.

[1] Polychrome brickwork, moulded dressings and facings, decorative gables and elaborate windows characterise all the structures – even the 95-foot (29 m) chimney, which stands apart from the main buildings like a campanile.

As well as the restored pumping station equipment, the complex has a wide range of exhibits: more than 1,500 were in place less than a year after it opened.

Brighton and neighbouring Hove, on the English Channel coast between the South Downs and the sea, were built on top of a vast aquifer of chalk.

[3] By the 1850s, more water was needed for the continually expanding population: the intermittent supply from the Lewes Road waterworks was the only alternative to wells and boreholes.

[2] The company employed eminent civil engineer Thomas Hawksley to find a suitable site for a new pumping station.

[4] In 1858, he advised the company that the shallow chalk valley at Goldstone Bottom, at the south end of West Blatchington village just outside Hove, would be a good candidate for exploratory drilling.

[8] By this stage, the Lewes Road facility was suffering from pollution, and the opening of another pumping station at Falmer and the building of more reservoirs had not been sufficient to satisfy demand.

[4][8] In its original form, the complex consisted of a boiler house and adjacent engine room, coal cellars and a chimney described by one historian as "truly monumental",[6] all built of polychrome brick.

[4][11][12] Workshop facilities were also provided, with a range of machine tools, forge, lathe and planer and a separate Easton and Amos steam engine, apparently left over from The Great Exhibition.

[9] Meanwhile in 1934, the boilers powering the Number 2 Engine were replaced by four new models of the same type,[11] built by the Blackburn-based Yates and Thom company.

This was granted on 17 June 1971, and in the following year the Department of the Environment issued a preservation order preventing demolition or significant alteration of the buildings.

[1][11][7] Minns acquired the lease of the complex in 1974, and planned to restore it from its derelict state and establish an industrial museum and educational centre.

[17] Every moving part was cleaned by hand, and the exterior was repainted in its correct colour after the original paintwork was discovered under layers of mould and rust.

The eight men worked for about six months on these tasks; Number 2 Engine was successfully fired up again on 14 March 1976 after the two renovated Lancashire boilers were tested and inspected by safety officials (the other two were left in their unrestored state).

[17][9] The official reopening, on 26 October 1976 (exactly 100 years after Number 2 Engine was first fired up), came after the coal store was converted into an exhibition and educational area.

[1] Although the Southern Water Authority, which still owned the site, paid for improvements in 1983, and grants came in from East Sussex County Council and Hove Borough Council, there was no financial backing from central government—although the Engineerium was acknowledged as a national and international leader in industrial heritage and "the world's only centre for the teaching of engineering conservation".

[1] (Employees of the Engineerium have helped to set up or renovate more than 20 similar institutions across the world, and it was designated as England's South East Regional Centre during Industrial Heritage Year in 1993.

)[1] The centre's second royal visit, by the Duke of Kent in 1993, coincided with a fundraising plea for £4 million, to be spent on extensions to the exhibition space and workshop; Minns also applied unsuccessfully for a National Lottery grant.

[21] In August 2011, Brighton and Hove City Council approved a planning application for some renovation and remodelling work, including an extension.

The cast-iron windows are set in round-arched openings below a string course which runs around the whole building and consists of alternate patterns of red and black brick.

[1][30] The former coal shed (now the exhibition hall) and its attached workshops are of red and brown brick with coping on the walls and a shallow slate roof.

[1][33] Flints are prevalent in this downland area; so many were found when the pumping station was built that the contractors fashioned them into a deliberately ancient-looking folly on the southwest corner of the engine rooms.

Originally owned by the local authority in Barnstaple, Devon, the Shand Mason & Company vehicle was bought and restored by the museum's employees.

The single-cylinder Easton and Amos steam engine used to power the belts which drive the machine tools in the workshop was already several years old when the Goldstone Pumping Station acquired it in 1875.

[19] When Jonathan Minns, who later bought the complex, found in 1971 that it was threatened with demolition, he successfully sought to get it listed by the Historic Buildings Council for England (the predecessor of English Heritage).

[30] Three more structures were listed at Grade II: the cooling pond and leat,[32] the coal storage shed[31] and the flint and brick walls surrounding the complex.