Gatehouse And Boundary Wall At Kew Bridge Pumping Station

TQ 1877 KEW BRIDGE ROAD (North side), Brentford

787/18/10064 Gatehouse and Boundary Wall at Kew bridge Pumping Station

GV II

Porters' lodge, office and meter room, c.1838; with laboratory added c.1902; front rebuilt after bomb damage in 1918; now gatehouse. Boundary wall c.1845. London stock brick with brick ridge stack and slate roof. PLAN: Two office rooms on the N side, with porter's lodge on S by former station entrance, and laboratory behind. EXTERIOR: Single storey with parapeted, twin-gabled front to east, office doorway under flat hood with a segmental-arched window to right, boarded at time of inspection and a bracketed canopy in the gable protected the station clock, now in the Museum. Gable to the left set back with entrance to the former Lodge, attached to gate pier (qv). The right return has a wide window set forward, formerly to the Superintendent's office. Former laboratory added to rear with matching gable. The boundary wall extends approx. 80m to the west. INTERIOR: Functional interior without decorative details; fireplaces blocked. HISTORY: The pumping station was designed by William Anderson for the Grand Junction Waterworks Company, to extract river water from the Thames. It started pumping in 1838. Filter beds were dug to the rear of the gatehouse in 1845, and extraction moved to Hampton, above the tidal reach, in 1855. Kew is the oldest waterworks in the world containing its original steam pumping engines, and is the most complete early pumping station in Britain. For its early date and for the completeness of the station, including the offices and gatehouse, it is the most important historic site of the water industry in the country. The gatehouse forms part of Anderson's original layout of the waterworks, and contained the station's main offices, a room for the gate porter to check visitors in and out, and meter rooms for monitoring the station's output. After nationalisation under the Metropolitan Water Board in 1903 a laboratory was included for water analysis, a very early example indicating the more scientific approach to water provision in the C20. The front was damaged and rebuilt in 1918 after one of the first German bomber raids on London. Brown, K: Kew Bridge Engines (u/d); Kew Bridge Steam Museum Library, KB/G2, Plan and Elevation of Lodge, 21 Nov. 1838; Douet,J: MPP The Water and Sewage Industry Step 1 Report for English Heritage, 1995

Listing NGR: TQ1874877994