Maple Brook Pumping Station

Maple Brook Pumping Station

Water pumping station built 1912–15 for the South Staffordshire Waterworks Company. Designed by H Ashton Hill, the company engineer, and constructed by Messrs B Whitehouse and Sons of Birmingham. The building has undergone late 20th-century and early 21st-century alterations and additions.

The station is constructed of red brick with cast stone dressings and slate roofs with glazed lantern lights. The plan comprises a square-on-plan engine house with a rectangular-on-plan boiler house attached at the rear. A former workshop, now an electricity substation, and a late 20th-century oil store are attached to the rear of the boiler house.

The engine house is three bays on each side, rising as a tall single storey over a basement. It has a chamfered plinth and corner pilasters connected by a dentil frieze. Each pilaster has a projecting top section with brick corbelling and a dentil cornice running between them. Above is a stone-coped parapet with raised corners and central sections topped with ball finials. The hipped roof of slate, concealed behind the parapet, has a flat central section with a glazed lantern light.

The principal north-west elevation features a central doorway accessed by a left-turn flight of stone steps. The doorway has a bolection surround and flat canopy, with early 21st-century double doors and a rectangular fanlight with radial glazing bars. A central date panel above the doorway is inscribed 'S.S.W.W. / 1913'. Flanking the doorway are tall rectangular metal-framed windows with small-paned glazing bars and moulded sills and chamfered lintels of cast stone. The basement has two bricked-up window openings with cast stone lintels directly beneath the first-floor windows. The return elevations have identical fenestration patterns with similarly bricked-up basement window openings.

The boiler house is attached to the rear with a lower roofline and similar articulation. Its north-west face has a late 20th-century central doorway flanked by bricked-up doorways and bricked-up window openings. The south-west elevation has two small square metal-framed windows with small-paned glazing bars. The hipped slate roof is concealed behind a stone-coped parapet and has a glazed lantern light running the full length of the ridge.

Attached to the right-hand side of the boiler house's north-west elevation is a former workshop and oil store, now an electricity substation. It has a chamfered plinth, terracotta cornice and a stone-coped parapet. The north-west elevation is formed of four recessed panels with dentilled heads. The north-east side has a doorway and a bricked-up window opening, whilst the south-east face has a doorway and two bricked-up window openings. All window and door openings to the rear ranges have cast stone sills and lintels.

A late 20th-century oil store of brick with a bituminous felt roof adjoins the left-hand side of the boiler house.

Interior

The engine house retains an inverted triple expanding surface condensing rotative steam engine of 1915 by Galloways Ltd of Manchester. Standing against the south-east wall is an inverted duplex enclosed engine installed in 1915 by Bumsted and Chandler of Hednesford to drive the 5kw dynamo for the station's lights. An overhead gantry crane by Richard C Gibbins and Co of Birmingham is supported by side pilasters. The basement retains the original force pumps (plunger type) and an Edwards air pump, all installed in 1915. Both the engine house and boiler house have metal-framed braced rafter roofs.

The boiler house, now devoid of its boilers, has a mezzanine level and has been partly subdivided with late 20th-century blockwork walls to create ancillary office accommodation and a toilet block.

The early 21st-century electric pumps and motor control centre in the pump house, together with associated pipework, and the late 20th-century blockwork walling in the boiler house are not of special architectural or historic interest.