Water Tower at Knockbracken Healthcare Park, Saintfield Road, Belfast, BT8 8BH

Water Tower at Knockbracken Healthcare Park

A two-stage masonry water tower dating from 1909, constructed in the grounds of the former Belfast & District Lunatic Asylum. Although utilitarian in purpose, the tower possesses considerable architectural interest by virtue of its imposing scale, quality of construction, and decorative treatment in sandstone and brick. The spatial relationships between the reservoir, pump, and former header tank are historically significant, as is the survival of the original manual pump mechanism. The roof structure comprises an elaborate assemblage of steelwork. The tower functions as an imposing landscape feature and has group value with the other buildings within the historic Belfast Villa Colony Asylum complex.

The tower stands towards the north end of Knockbracken Healthcare Park on high ground overlooking the estate, with a covered reservoir immediately to its east. It is a tall single-bay structure, square in plan and two storeys high. The pyramidal roof is clad in painted corrugated asbestos sheeting (the original was probably corrugated metal). The roof is surmounted by a clock tower, also pyramidal in profile and clad in asbestos-fibre slates with a metal finial at its apex. Although clock faces appear on all four sheeted sides, the dials are missing. Replacement plastic downpipes are present, but the gutters to the sheeted projecting eaves soffits have been removed.

The walls are constructed of quarried blackstone brought to courses and embellished with stepped brick quoins. A moulded sandstone string course separates the two stages, from the corners of which dressed sandstone spouts project. Two courses of ashlar sandstone surround the eaves. All openings have flat brick heads and stepped brick jambs; windows feature dressed sandstone cills.

The original entrance to the tower is on the south elevation, its doorway now sheeted with plywood. Above it, below the string course, is an 8/8 timber-framed sliding sash window. A defunct electrical junction box is mounted on the wall between the door and window. The east and west elevations are identical, each containing 8/8 windows at ground and upper floor levels; the ground floor windows have been sheeted over for security. Two dressed granite blocks are set flush into the walls between the upper and lower windows on these elevations, serving to carry internal floor beams. An external cast-iron water pipe, probably associated with the internal pump, is located at the left side of the ground floor window on the east elevation. Ivy growth partially covers the west elevation.

The north elevation originally contained a window level with those on the east and west elevations, but its frame has been removed to accommodate a roller shutter door. The original sandstone cill has been replaced with a concrete doorstep, now level with the road surface outside, which has been raised considerably over the years. An 8/8 window survives below the string course, and a modern electric light is mounted on the right-hand north-west quoin.

Immediately east of the tower stands a grass-covered water reservoir measuring approximately 55 metres by 14 metres in plan. Several cast-iron ventilation pipes of inverted U-profile project from its top. The reservoir is now surrounded by a modern post and wire fence, remains apparently full of water, and is no longer in use.

A mid-1900s pump house lies south-west of the water tower. This single-storey, single-bay building features a pitched natural slate roof and machined red brick walls, and retains two long-defunct electric pumps.

Historical Background

Knockbracken Healthcare Park originated with the Belfast District Lunatic Asylum, established in 1895 in the grounds of Purdysburn House, the residence of Narcissus Batt. Between 1895 and 1910, various buildings were erected, including this water tower and adjacent covered reservoir in 1909. Both structures appear on Ordnance Survey maps from 1919 onwards.

The covered reservoir contained water which was manually pumped from inside the tower to a header tank on its top floor, supplying water to various residential, administrative, recreational, and religious buildings throughout the estate. The means by which water entered the covered reservoir is uncertain, though it lies close to a water pipe running from Dunnywater in the Mournes to a service reservoir north of the Purdysburn Estate, which came on stream in the early 1900s. Gravity feed from this supply is therefore possible.

According to Dr Michael Gould, the clock surmounting the tower's roof came from the Royal Hospital in Frederick Street, Belfast, which opened in 1850 but was superseded by the Royal Victoria Hospital in 1903.

The original manual pump inside the tower, worked by asylum inmates, was replaced by two electric water pumps during the mid-1900s. A second pump house was constructed around this time, positioned downhill and south-west of the tower. It contained two electric centrifugal water pumps which apparently raised water to the covered reservoir. Although a spring-fed stream runs alongside this pump house building, the precise source of the pumps' water supply remains uncertain, as does whether this represented an auxiliary feed or a replacement of the original supply.

The water tower and reservoir are now abandoned, with the tower serving as a store.