Swingate Water Tower including paired flight of steps and balustrading

A water tower, designed by Ritchie and Partners for the Corporation of Nottingham Water Department, in neo-classical style, constructed in the later 1940s and commissioned in 1950.

MATERIALS: textured reinforced concrete, on a steel frame, with artificial stone details.

PLAN: square plan, the water tank measuring 30ft by 30ft.

EXTERIOR:a solid-sided water tower, in a neoclassical style. At ground level, set into the bank of the reservoir to its rear, the foot of the tower forms a plinth, with a cyma recta moulding narrowing to the body of the access tower. Within the plinth, a wide central entrance doorway, with a plain moulded surround, is flanked by windows. The moulding breaks upwards above the door, to a canopy on brackets which also forms a cill to the window above. Set into this upward extension of the plinth is a relief of the arms of the City of Nottingham. The access tower rises with straight sides, a curtain wall surrounding the internal steel structure. To each side is a narrow, tall window opening, housing metal-framed, multi-paned windows. The heads of the windows are articulated with classically-inspired, applied reconstituted stone swags with drops to either side of the windows. Above the windows, the water tank is corbelled out on all sides, the junction between the tower and the tank marked by a cornice of reconstituted stone, with dentil motifs. Further detailing is cast into the concrete at the top of the tank. The sides rise as a parapet above the top of the covered tank. The central access rises as a square box with double doors above the surface of the top of the tank.

INTERIOR: the interior of the shaft is empty apart from an access staircase and the internal structure, of steel.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES The water tower is flanked by paired flights of STEPS, which rise through the height of the bank of the reservoir. The steps have moulded treads with noses, and rise between solid balustrades, the inner side hugging the foot of the tower and terminating in broad, circular piers with narrower caps. The outer balustrades follow the flight of steps and then scroll inwards, clasping and defining the forecourt of the water tower, and scrolling back out to terminate in piers which are a larger version of those to the inner balustrade.

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 9 February 2023 to amend the name