Pump House, Clarendon Quay, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1 3AL

Pump House, Clarendon Quay, Belfast

A single-storey pump house built in the late nineteenth century, located on Clarendon Dock between two of Belfast's earliest graving docks. The building was constructed to replace an earlier pump house on the site (now refurbished for office use) and appears on Ordnance Survey maps from 1884 onwards.

The pump house is aligned north-south between the eastern ends of two graving docks. It is a single-bay building with a hipped natural slate roof featuring oversailing eaves with timber soffits and half-round plastic rainwater goods. The walls are painted and rendered, with underlying material unknown. Access is via a double-leaf timber door on the east elevation. The north gable has two sets of high-level metal-framed windows with 5x2 panes. A small lean-to extension has been added to the middle of the south gable, and the walls are otherwise blank.

Inside, the building contains a relatively modern electrically-powered pump in the basement, along with a smaller pump to drain seepage. The building has been largely rebuilt and contains no original machinery.

A short distance to the southwest of the building stand two hand-operated cast-iron valve stands mounted on a circular concrete plinth. These remain in use to cut off water in the pipes between the bottom of the dry docks and the emptying pumps. The tops of the stands are inscribed "Glenfield & Kennedy Kilmarnock".

The pump house sits immediately east of the original workshop and pump house on Clarendon Dock, which connects to Belfast Lough. It stands between Graving Dock No. 1 (constructed for the Belfast Ballast Board by William Ritchie between 1796 and 1800) to the southwest, and Graving Dock No. 2 (constructed for the Belfast Ballast Board by Henry, Mullins & McMahon under David Logan's supervision to a design by Thomas Burnett, opening in 1826) to the northwest. Dock No. 1 measures 235 feet long by 28 feet wide; Dock No. 2 is slightly larger at 285 feet by 34 feet. Clarendon Dock itself, a wet dock with a sea lock separating it from the tideway, was built by the Belfast Harbour Commissioners in 1850-51 and is named after George William Frederick Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1847 to 1852.

The surrounding area has been landscaped with grass and ornamental trees, and three anchors and a ship's propeller are displayed here. The area to the west and north of the dock has been paved with stone flags. The pump house is recorded as a structure of group value and local historical interest, contributing to the completeness of Clarendon Dock as one of Belfast's landmark maritime landscapes, though the building itself has limited special architectural or historic merit in isolation.