The Pump at Lower End, Ashendon.
[A précis of some notes kindly provided by Kevin Nash]
The pump in Lower End lay derelict for many years, with no handle and no cap, and at some stage someone had placed concrete into the barrel making the plunger inoperable.
In 2013, the Parish Council had identified the remains of the pump as being an eyesore and decided that it should be renovated - not to get it into working order, but to retain the original look.
It was established that it was a Cottage Pump manufactured by Joseph Evans & Sons (Wolverhampton) Ltd., and contact was made by the chairman of the Parish Council with Evans Engineering Ltd of Trebullet, Cornwall (run by a descendant of Joseph Evans), in the hope that they could source replacement parts. The company unfortunately had too much work on to have time to devote to this and so, somewhat reluctantly, it was decided that copies of the cap and the handle should be commissioned.
The nearest pump of the same type that could be found was in Kingham, Oxfordshire, so the chairman visited it to take some photographs and to draw around the shape of the handle on a piece of cardboard. He then emailed the Parish Clerk of Kingham in the hope that the Parish Council would be willing to let him borrow the cap so that a mould could be made and a new cap cast. Kingham readily agreed so he met the chairman and another parish councillor on site and borrowed the cap. In the meantime, the outline of the handle had been transferred to plywood and the shape cut out and checked to see that it fitted the Ashendon pump. The cap and the plywood shape, together with photographs of the Kingsham handle, were then taken to Gomme's Forge at Loosey Row where a mould of the cap was taken and an aluminium cap produced. The original cap was returned to Kingham and replaced on their pump, none the worse for wear. Later, the new handle was produced and fitted to the pump and the whole structure painted black.