Control Room, Boughton Water Pumping Station

Control Room, Boughton Water Pumping Station

This former diesel engine house, now used as a control room, was built in 1913 for the Chester Waterworks Company. The building is constructed of pale yellow brick with a sandstone ashlar plinth and darker brick and ashlar dressings, beneath a slate roof. It is designed in the Italianate style.

The building is rectangular in plan, positioned immediately south of the water tower with which it was functionally associated. It is single-storey, comprising a 4-window gable and 5-window side ranges. The exterior features a banded ashlar plinth, brick cill and impost band, and a moulded eaves cornice with coped pediment gables. The principal elevation is characterized by round-arched arcades separated by pilaster strips. Doorways are positioned in the centre of the side elevation with a round-arched fanlight above, and in the east gable with a moulded surround. Round-arched windows contain glazing bars with a round pane at the top. A square ridge lantern with scrolled corner buttresses and a domed top crowns the roof. The east gable pediment contains a dated cartouche, while the west gable incorporates a louvred oculus.

The interior walls are finished in glazed tiling. The building retains two diesel engines for emergency power generation and electrical pumps, alongside added electrical control equipment. The roof is supported on tensioned metal trusses carrying five tiers of purlins.

The diesel engine house forms part of the former Tower Works, a river abstraction and water treatment works built for the Chester Waterworks Company in 1851-3. The complex was originally powered by a Cornish beam engine manufactured at Adam Woodward's Queens Foundry in Manchester. The site incorporated three sand filters and a brick-vaulted reservoir. The water tower was heightened from 70 to 84 feet in 1884 by jacking up the tank. Other additions to the complex included a Davey horizontal steam engine, site offices and laboratory. The diesel engine house forms a group with the water tower, boiler house and attached railings.