Pumping Station

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.