Modern waterwheel. Designed and constructed by a local engineer, Robert Casement, in 1854, and named in honour of the then lieutenant governor's wife, Lady Isabella Hope, the Laxey Wheel is the largest working waterwheel of its kind in the world. The wheel is 72' 6" in diameter and 6' wide, (22.1 by 1.8m).


Technically a 'pitch backshot wheel', water is delivered to the top of wheel via a pipe, running up the core of the masonry pillar that supports the viewing platform, from a cistern high on the neighbouring hillside. The wheel turns a crank which provided power via a system of rods to one of the neighbouring shafts, where a series of pumps raised over 40 gallons a minute from the deepest part of the Laxey mine to the main adit level.


The Laxey mine was amongst the richest sources of zinc, lead and silver anywhere in the British Isles in the later 19th century, but one of the key elements in the successful extraction of the ores was the control of ground-water which would otherwise have flooded the 600m deep mine complex.


There were no natural supplies of coal on the Island and so waterwheels, powered by surface-water, were used to drive the necessary pumps.