Former Water Pump House, North Third Water Filter Plant

Dated 1931, the former Water Pump House, part of the North Third Water Filter Plant, was designed for Grangemouth Town Council with mechanical equipment provided by Paterson Candy International. The plant ceased operation in 1975, with equipment upgrades in 1985, before reopening in 1989 and finally closing in 2000. It was sold into private ownership in 2006.

The building is a monumental, two-storey structure built over a raised, battered basement and is rectangular in plan. It is of Italianate style, featuring a prominent pyramidally-roofed, four-stage angle tower with a finial. The pump house is prominently sited on hills north of the North Third Reservoir. The exterior is dry-dashed over brick and concrete, with banded cill courses and an eaves course. A broad doorpiece with a raised margin and a moulded plaque bearing "GWW 1931" marks the entrance. The north-west facing elevation is dominated by the tower, which features a brick forestair leading to a part-glazed, two-leaf timber entrance door, rising through the basement and second stages. The tower also has windows at the third and fourth stages. The south-east facing elevation has a large, semicircular window containing a later door, and a gunloop in the gablehead. Regularly-fenestrated bays are located to the north-east and south-west; the south-west elevation has windows only on the first floor. A concrete clad enclosure, at basement level in the north-east corner, housed water running to storage tanks to the south. Basement walls are almost two inches thick.

The building has metal windows with a multi-pane glazing pattern and hopper-type openings. The roof is covered in grey slates with large horizontal rooflights, and has a shallow overhang.

The interior retains many original features, including glazed bricks throughout, with rounded cill details and voussoired arches. The entrance hall displays horizontal Art Deco patterning within the glazed bricks and a mosaic tiled floor featuring the Grangemouth Town Council emblem, “INGENIUM VINCIT OMNIA” (slightly damaged). On the ground floor, a narrow room to the north-east contains filter outlets, controls and valves. Large tanks fill the remaining space. A dog-leg staircase is located within the tower, leading to a room containing a water tank and a complex metal roof structure lined with Belgian pine. The first floor is open-plan, housing three rapid gravity settling/filter tanks, pumping equipment, an ironwork roof structure, and Belgian pine roof lining.