Pumping Station is a Grade II listed building in the Cheshire West and Chester local planning authority area, England. First listed on 23 July 1998. Pumping station.
Pumping Station
- WRENN ID
- sacred-parapet-jay
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Cheshire West and Chester
- Constituency
- Chester North and Neston MP: Samantha Dixon (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 23 July 1998
- Type
- Pumping station
- Address
- Pumping Station, Castle Drive
- OS grid reference
- SJ 406 658
- Coordinates
- 53.186, -2.88933
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The pumping station is a hydro-electric generating station, now used by the water company, built between 1912 and 1913 for Chester City Council. The project was overseen by the council's Electrical Engineer, S.E. Britton, with design adjustments made by the Chester and North Wales Architectural Society to create a building that harmonized with the nearby Old Dee Bridge. The structure is made of coursed tooled red sandstone and features a flat roof.
The front elevation facing Castle Drive is simple, with an unpierced stone face to the generator hall that displays the inscription "CITY OF CHESTER HYDRO-ELECTRIC POWER STATION : A.D. MCMXIII" in raised letters on a long stone panel. To the right, there is a small ashlar entrance tower with oak three-leaf folding doors featuring three fielded panels in a Tudor-arched opening, topped with a stone parapet.
On the west side, which faces the river, the building has a leaded lancet window in the tower, three buttressed bays with a pointed-arched spillway in the first bay, and recessed pointed-arched stone panels in the second and third bays. There is a weathered string course and two pairs of leaded lancets in each bay, along with a shorter blank end-bay. The east side mirrors this design but includes steel eel-traps for the inlets and a steel walkway. The south end features a substantial walkway-plinth with a sluice on the right, above which are a pair of boarded oak doors with a postern set in a broad pointed archway. The interior has not been inspected. The pumping station is located on the site of the medieval Mills of Dee.
Local climate
Pumping Station receives an average of 890 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 66% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 78% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 31 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 62% of listed buildings. Of these, 14 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
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- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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