Building record 0445901000 - Entrance to Dancer's End Pumping Station

Brick entrance gateway with small gate lodge, piers unstable and held up with scaffolding (B3).
The engine house and pump rooms, watchman’s lodge, gate piers and attached boundary walls of Dancers End Pumping Station, principally of 1866 by George Devey, for Chiltern Hills Water Company, extended later C19, are designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
- Architectural interest: designed by George Devey, an able and competent architect who designed other buildings for the Rothschild estate but was not normally associated with industrial structures, it is carefully detailed, using good quality materials; - Historical interest; the pumping station was completed in 1866, relatively early in the development phase of C19 waterworks construction in England, when steam-powered pumping was the state-of-the-art technology for such installations, and when most undertakings, both private and municipal, were architecturally impressive; - Process: unlike most waterworks, where slaked lime had to be imported to facilitate the Clark’s water softening process (patented 1841), Dancers End Pumping Station was self-sufficient and all processes were undertaken on site; - Intactness: apart from the loss of the boiler room chimneys, the exterior is unaltered and the late-C19 extension complements the earlier phase of the structure. Although the steam engines have been removed, the function of the buildings and the process, supported by ancillary buildings and structures, are legible; - Group value: the structures are part of a group of well-preserved pumping station buildings, including the Grade II listed cooling pond [0445904000]. See listing description for detail (B7).