Control Room, Boughton Water Pumping Station is a Grade II listed building in the Cheshire West and Chester local planning authority area, England. First listed on 17 March 2006. Control room. 2 related planning applications.
Control Room, Boughton Water Pumping Station
- WRENN ID
- former-cobble-rook
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Cheshire West and Chester
- Constituency
- Chester North and Neston MP: Samantha Dixon (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 17 March 2006
- Type
- Control room
- Address
- Control Room, Boughton Water Pumping Station, Tarvin Road, CH3 5DH
- OS grid reference
- SJ 419 666
- Coordinates
- 53.19366, -2.87099
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
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.
Local climate
Control Room, Boughton Water 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.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 2 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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