Engine house, pump rooms, watchman's lodge, boundary wall and gate piers at Dancers End Pumping Station

This pumping station was principally built in 1866 and extended in the late 19th century. The buildings are attributed to the architect George Devey. The complex comprises an engine house, pump rooms, a watchman's lodge, and boundary walls with gate piers, all constructed in red-brown brick with polychromatic moulded brick and soft red brick dressings. The buildings have flat concrete roofs with stone coping and finials.

Layout

The original structure is a rectangular-plan, two-storey building dating from 1866. Later 19th-century additions include a single-storey rectangular boiler room, a booster pump room, a well pump room, and a chlorination room.

The 1866 Engine House

The original engine house is designed in the Artisan Mannerist style, standing two storeys high and measuring four by two bays. A tall chimney is attached to the north-east corner.

The main north-west elevation is divided into four bays. A moulded brick plinth sits below the ground floor, which is architecturally treated as a basement. This level is built in plain brick with brick quoins and features three narrow two-over-two pane horned sash windows set within openings with plain architraves beneath red brick flat arches with projecting keystones. In the left-hand northern bay, a flight of stone steps leads up to a flat-roofed brick porch. The porch has round-arched front and side openings in red brick, flanked by pilasters at the corners that rise to a moulded brick cornice. Above the porch, a tall brick parapet features a shaped centrepiece containing a roundel with an 1866 datestone. A pair of half-glazed doors have glass panels etched with an image of Neptune with water spilling from a cornucopia, inscribed 'Chiltern Hills Water Works 1867'.

The principal first floor, positioned above a moulded storey band, has rusticated brick piers at the corners that rise to a projecting moulded brick cornice. The main and rear elevations are articulated by rusticated pilaster strips. Each bay contains a tall, narrow, segmental-arched two-over-two pane horned sash window with red brick dressings. The two-bay return elevations have plain pilasters, and on the south-west elevation there are blind openings. A panelled parapet decorated with corner ball finials screens the flat concrete roof. The centre of each end elevation is ramped up to form a small gable enclosing a blind roundel. At the centre of the ground floor on the south-west elevation is the rusticated and truncated base of the original chimney stack, flanked to the right by a square-headed doorway.

The ground floor of the north-east elevation is obscured by the late 19th-century extension. Above this extension, it has a four-pane horned sash window with a segmental arch and an attached octagonal stair tower. This tower is surmounted by a lantern with infilled round arches and an octagonal domed roof topped with a weather vane. Doors at the top of the stair and at its base open onto the flat roofs of the engine house and the late 19th-century extension.

To the rear of the original building, the boiler room was housed in a single-storey, four-by-one bay arcaded range with a projecting brick cornice and flat roof. This has been converted into an electrical substation, and the arcade has been infilled with doors inserted in the two end bays.

Late 19th-Century Extension

A late 19th-century single-storey extension in a simplified Queen Anne Revival style was built against the north-east elevation of the engine house. It contains a booster pump room, a well pump room, an entrance lobby, a chlorination room, and a new boiler house range. The two pump rooms are taller than the rest of the structure.

The well pump room echoes the architectural style of the engine house with brick quoins, a moulded cornice, and a parapet. On the main elevation it is lit by three full-height four-over-four pane horned sash windows with segmental arches, and by a square glazed louvred skylight in the flat concrete roof. Linking it to the engine house, the plainer booster pump room has a central round-arched doorway flanked by, and positioned below, small keyed square windows (one blind), and by an oculus at first-floor level.

The lower single-storey range to the rear has an L-shaped plan and wraps around the south-east and north-east walls of the taller rooms, with the boiler room occupying the south-eastern side. It has rusticated corners rising to a moulded cornice with a low parapet obscuring a flat concrete roof. A glass block skylight over the boiler room has corner brick pillars and a pyramidal tile roof, rising above the height of the parapet. Given the relatively small size of this skylight, it seems likely that it was originally a louvred ventilator. The north-east elevation has two round-arched brick openings—a glazed door and a blind window—with an inserted late 20th-century double doorway. One of the arches contains a four-pane sash window with simple brick architraves and a projecting keystone, the other a late 20th-century roller shutter door. The plain south-east elevation has a late 20th-century doorway and two casement windows, inserted when the boiler room was converted to a workshop.

Interiors

Engine House

The engine house has a cantilevered stone stair with a timber handrail on plain cast-iron balusters and decorative newel posts. A doorway in the south-western wall of the lobby leads to the former steam condenser room, which contains a low, rounded, rectangular stone curb enclosing a steel plate cover over well number 2. Two cast-iron columns set into the kerb support the cast-iron beams and joists of the first-floor engine room above. A bricked-up doorway and openings in the south-east wall originally gave access to the former arcaded boiler room built against the rear elevation of the engine house. A brick plinth, which provided the base for the twin beam engine on the first floor, rises the full height of the room against the south-west wall. The former engine room is devoid of original fittings apart from four lifting rings in the concrete ceiling; the holdfast for the engine may still exist under the secondary floor covering. From the first floor, a stone winder stair within the stair turret leads to the roofs. Modern steel storage racks within this building are not of special interest.

Late 19th-Century Extension

The late 19th-century extension contains the chlorination room, the workshop (formerly the boiler room), the well pump room, and the booster pump room. The chlorination room has a four-panel timber door with glazed upper panels and is equipped with 21st-century chlorination equipment, which is not of special interest. The workshop is devoid of any original fittings. The well pump room has a red quarry-brick tile floor with a concrete roof containing two lifting rings and a beam-mounted block and tackle. Two late 19th-century cast-iron valve pillar wheels, manufactured by Glenfield and Kennedy of Kilmarnock, and a chequered plate manhole are set in the floor. Late 20th-century electrical cabinets and chlorination equipment within the room are not of special interest. A doorway in the south-west wall leads into the booster pump room, which is devoid of any original fittings apart from a girder beam for block and tackle lifting equipment. A door beneath the projecting base of the stair turret leads to the engine house.

Subsidiary Features

The engine house sits within a complex of structures within a walled courtyard. The courtyard is screened by a wall and entered through a gateway flanked by a pair of brick gate posts with rubbing stones at their base and capped by ball finials. To the north-east of the engine house, the brick wall is raised on a brick plinth and capped with coping stones. The north-eastern section of this wall has an attached square-plan watchman's lodge in polychrome brickwork with a projecting brick cornice and a flat roof behind a low parapet. It is entered by a door in the south-west elevation and is illuminated by two small four-pane sash windows—one in the south-east elevation and one in the north-west that provides a view over the approaches to the pumping station.

Other structures within the courtyard and the adjacent workshops, cottages, and superintendent's house contribute to this group. However, they have not been assessed for listing and are not included in this list entry.