The Tank House, Coca Cola Enterprises Limited

The Tank House, Coca Cola Enterprises Limited, Hardwick Terrace, Colwall

A tank house associated with a bottling plant for mineral water, designed by Truefitt and Truefitt around 1900. The building is constructed of brick with tile-clad and partly-rendered walls. It features a hipped roof and a central square vent to the ridge with louvered sides, topped with a pyramidal lead roof and weather vane. The exterior presents two ranks of openings, though the interior comprises one unified space.

The south-eastern front comprises four bays. At ground floor level, a doorway positioned left of centre has a stone surround with columns flanking a round-arched opening, the columns carrying carved foliate capitals. To the left of the doorway is a two-light casement with cambered head, and to the right are a blocked lancet and a two-light casement with round-arched head. A lean-to timber veranda stands in front of the ground floor, featuring decorated fascia boards which continue as cusped bargeboards over the gabled head above the doorway. At first floor level are four bays with similar louvered openings topped by pointed heads, each with small gables above carrying decorative bargeboards. The rear and flanks are stuccoed at ground floor level and tile-hung at first floor. The rear wall has a single window at right of centre to the ground floor, apparently added in the twentieth century, and is otherwise blank.

The interior is largely boarded with varnished pine. The upper openings in the south-eastern wall retain shutters.

The building was designed to emulate the form of the Holy Well at Malvern Springs. Malvern water was first bottled by Schweppes in 1850 from the Holy Well spring, and Schweppes gained a concession for the 1851 Great Exhibition, featuring Malvern Water in a large glass fountain which formed one of the central features in the Crystal Palace. The bottled water, initially known as Malvern Soda, was renamed Malvern Seltzer in 1856. Seeking better distribution via railway, the company entered into an agreement with the Ballard family, who owned land in Colwall. The Ballards' own water supply was used initially, but a need for greater capacity led them to sign a long lease in 1927 for water from the Pewtress Well at Barton Court, now known as Primeswell. This well fed the stream described in William Langland's 'Vision of Piers Plowman', and a pipe ran from the wellhead through meadows and beneath the railway line to the Colwall site. The building was originally used as a tank house for the bottling plant. By August 1945, according to a factory survey drawing, it was recorded as 'Female staff cloaks Ladies'. By the time of the factory's closure, the building served as an exhibition room displaying the history of the factory. The factory complex operated as a bottling plant throughout the twentieth century until closure in November 2010.