Bailey Hill Water Tower

WEST HILL ROAD 1. 5123 Bailey Hill Water Tower TL 0920 4/3 II

1. 1. Bold Arts and Crafts design comparable with work of Townsend. Design consultant Henry T Hare. Luton grey bricks, stone dressings. Square plan on splayed plinth with stone mouldings, and rounded demi tower at each corner, the north-west one forming stair tower with narrow slit casement windows. The north face has a low broad round arched deeply recessed ground floor entrance in stone. On other 3 faces at first floor level is a single round headed mullioned and transomed window, with iron glazing bars, quoining and splayed cill. At upper level all four faces have a pair of 2 light mullioned windows with iron glazing bars. Above these, each face has a heavy rectangular stone balcony supported on three pairs of brackets and with a projecting spout at each end. Above the balcony, a broad round headed arch springs from the demi towers to form a recess, within which a central door surmounted by a tripartite keystone gives access to the balcony and is flanked on either side by 4 casements windows with iron glazing bars. Upper section of tower decorated with stone bands of various widths. Pyramidal roof of stone slates with deeply projecting eaves, a winged figure acting as a corbel or bracket support at each of the four corners. Small hipped dormer to each face of roof. Built to supply water to Stopsley after the drought of 1898. (W Austin, Luton and Its Hamlets, 1928, II p 213).

Listing NGR: TL0920120067