North Building, Glassford Water Treatment Works

Two single-storey red sandstone buildings dated 1895, built as part of a water filtering station by the civil engineers J & A Leslie & Reid of Edinburgh. The buildings are rectangular on plan with snecked, rock-faced walls, ashlar dressings and neo-Baroque style details. They have pitched slate roofs with crowstepped gables and moulded skewputts. The interior of the north building contains a sunken water tank with its associated equipment still in place. Both buildings are now vacant and no longer in use, as the operational water works has relocated to the north. The site sits in a rural setting northwest of the village of Glassford, on elevated ground at 760 feet above Ordnance Survey datum, positioned to the north and south of the former filter beds.

The main east elevations are gabled with a single central bay. Each has a twin-leaf timber-panelled entrance door with a swan-neck pedimented doorpiece and a louvered oculus above. The north building's lintel carries the carved stone inscription 'LMWDWW 1895'. The side elevations to north and south are three bays, divided by ashlar piers, with two window openings and blind slits. The rear elevation of the south building includes a two-bay red brick extension to the west, flat-roofed with a parapet, dating from the earlier to mid-20th century and excluded from the listing.

The roofs are steeply pitched with graded slate and terracotta ridge tiles. Cast iron rainwater goods sit on moulded eaves courses. Windows are 12-light timber casements, bi-partite in the north building; all are now boarded over with one having collapsed internally.

The interiors, observed in 2023, contain single open spaces with ashlar red sandstone walls and diagonal timber panelling to the roofs, braced with open metal trusses. The south building has a concrete floor. The north building contains a sunken water tank lined with glazed bricks, with an inspection walkway around its perimeter fitted with guard rails and a gangway to the east. Associated metal pipework, ladders and the sluice and spill mechanisms remain in place. A large stone archway at the west end leads into the adjacent covered reservoir, now disused and not included in the listing.

The site is bounded by dressed rubble walls with rounded copings and ashlar gate piers with capstones (one removed but retained behind the gate pier) and later metal gates. Stone steps with a coped dwarf wall stand to the east of the north building and the south of the south building. The site contains other water works buildings, including the former filter keeper's cottage, all excluded from the listing.

The filter beds between the two buildings appear to have been filled in and truncated to the west. The covered reservoir to the west of the north building no longer remains substantially intact, though its form is still evident in the landscape.

Historical Development

The buildings were constructed between 1894 and 1896 as part of the Lanarkshire Middle Ward District Water Works, established in response to severe water shortages experienced by the district in the summer of 1890. An Act of Parliament, the Lanarkshire (Middle Ward District) Water Act 1892, enabled the District Committee to construct the waterworks. J & A Leslie and Reid led the scheme, which included two new reservoirs on Glengavel Water, a tributary of the Avon and the Clyde, multiple service reservoirs and extensive piping. The first reservoir at High Plewlands was constructed first, and water fed by gravity to the high ground at Glassford, where it was filtered through sand before distribution across the district. The scheme cost an estimated £200,000, with the first gravitation water reaching Strathaven in 1896; a second reservoir at Kype opened in 1898.

The two filter buildings at Glassford were the scheme's principal filter station. Henderson and Duncan of Edinburgh oversaw construction of the four filter beds and clear water tanks, though J & A Leslie and Reid likely designed them. The site's high elevation of 760 feet above Ordnance Survey datum was deliberately selected to allow the system to operate largely by gravity rather than requiring pumping.

Additional sand filter beds were constructed at Glassford around 1907, and in the early 1930s a large reservoir was completed at Camps near Crawford, partially used to augment supply from Glengavel reservoir. The two buildings have remained substantially unchanged since construction, except for the red brick extension added to the west of the south building in the first half of the 20th century, whose original purpose is unknown.

Further filter beds and a reservoir were added to the north of the site with small-scale structures to the north, south and east by the early 1960s. These later additions have since been filled in and planted. The original filter beds were truncated around the later 20th century when a large water treatment building and associated structures were constructed, now vacant. A large covered reservoir now stands to the north. The former filter keeper's house, in private ownership, has been extended and altered in recent decades.