Mount Bures Water Treatment Works, Colchester Rd

Opened in 1937 and constructed by Henry Everett & Sons.
Here the staff are carrying out the final pointing of the brickwork before handing over the building

HISTORY OF THE PUMPING STATION
The Victorian pumping station and water treatment works at Mount Bures was constructed by Everett, Builders of Colchester in 1937

The land on which it stands is well documented from the early-13th century as a major common field serving the village of Bures St Mary 1.5 km to the north-west.

The access track from the B1308 Colchester Road on the south was known as Curd Mill Lane and led to the common meadows and a watermill on the nearby River Stour designed to crush curd for cheese making. The station was part of a major regional expansion in the water supply infrastructure during the 1930s to satisfy the increasing demand for piped water, and was built by Colchester Borough Corporation to pump water from a borehole 250m south of the river.

Ownership passed to the Colchester and District Water Board in 1960, which extracted up to 792,000 gallons per day, and in 1974 to Anglian Water which sold the building in 2017 having built a replacement to the north.

The Pumpin Station was constructed by the Colchester builders in red brick and tile of the highest quality, with a moulded stone string course, arched windows of gauged brick and four half-timbered gables.
As a distinctive local landmark of considerable architectural and historic interest it is rightly recorded as an undesignated heritage asset in the Historic Environment Record and warrants appropriate protection

The site initially contained a borehole, small storage tanks and a pumping station, with a house for the station keeper.

The station was relatively small, extracting a maximum of 792,000 gallons per day in the 1960s as opposed to 2,000,000 gallons at nearby Bowdens in Wormingford and 1,800,000 at Pop's Bridge in Horkesley when all three belonged to the Colchester and District Water Board.

In later years if not initially, it also operated as a water treatment works where the water was purified and enhanced by adding chemicals as indicated by the decontamination showers and other equipment that survived on site at the time of demolition.
It was sold at auction in 2017
The plant had been replaced by a larger structure of less architectural character built by Anglian Water to the north in 2013.

Courtesy of Leigh Alston MA (Oxon)
Bures St Mary

No date was published, but the refurbished Pumping Station was again put up For Sale now at £425,000
This time listed as follows:-
4 Bedrooms Detached house for sale in Colchester Road, Mount Bures, Bures, Essex CO8
By this time, Residential Planning Permission had been granted for Development