Pump House At King George Pumping Station

The pump house at King George Pumping Station, located on Swan and Pike Lane, was built in 1913. It was designed by William Booth Bryan for the Metropolitan Water Board. The building is constructed of English bond red brick with limestone dressings, set on a blue brick plinth, and has a hipped Welsh slate roof in an Edwardian Baroque style. It is a nine-by-three bay structure with corner turrets featuring moulded stone cornices and diamond-latticed windows. A stone cill band beneath the turret windows continues as a moulded stone string course beneath the parapets of the main elevations.

The nine-bay side elevations contain tall windows with glazing bars set in semi-circular arched architraves, with a moulded stone edge to each arch set on moulded imposts, divided by rusticated brick pilasters. Cast-iron casements with glazing bars are positioned within the plinth. Wide, raised pilasters flank a narrow entrance bay, which has a bracketed hipped gablet and diamond-latticed lights above a tall semi-circular architrave with glazing bars to a window set in a rusticated stone surround above a panelled door. Glazed clerestory lights are incorporated into the roof. The three-bay end elevations have a similar entrance bay with panelled double doors, flanked by narrow revealed bays with glazing-bar windows, set in rusticated stone semi-circular arched architraves above and square-headed architraves below.

Inside, the walls are glazed white brick with a green brick dado and cornice. A large cast-iron gantry runs along the top of the cornices, supported by cast-iron roof trusses. Five circular cast-iron casings originally housed gas bags, supplying gas to five 'Humphrey' gas pumps. These pumps, built by Siemens Brothers Limited, were situated in deep brick-lined pits, two of which remain in situ. Each pump was designed to raise 40 million gallons of water daily from the Lea Navigation into the King George Reservoir, utilizing an internal combustion process. The pumps, an invention of H A Humphrey, dispensed with conventional pistons and flywheels, instead relying on the momentum generated by the movement of water between the pump and tower—representing the first example of this type of technology. Each pit contained four water admission valves arranged in a ring casing around the base of the combustion chamber, with water then compressed into a cast-iron play pipe via the Water Tower House and Inlet Pipes and Weir to the reservoir.