584/0/10050 BERKELEY GARDENS 20-DEC-01 Rowhedge Watertower II Water tower. 1902, for the Lexden and Winstree Rural District Council. Red brick with cast-iron tank painted in red oxide and copper pavilion roof surmounted by a wooden turret. Built as a campanile, the elevations being in Romanesque style and being symmetrical with the exception of a door in the east elevation. The door has a glazed fanlight with a stone hood mould on the extrados of the half-round gauged brick arch. It is flanked by two tall and narrow semi-circular arched windows, with timber casements, that are set in tall semi-circular arched recessed panels, there being a shorter panel with similar window over the entrance. Other elevations are also in 3 bays, with full-height arches to similar recessed panels. Moulded and dentilled cornice set under water tank, with bracketed cornice to pyramidal roof; turret is louvred on 3 sides and glazed on the fourth. HISTORY: a fine example of a campanile water tower boldly executed in Romanesque style. Water towers formed an integral element of the built infrastructure water distribution systems - which included reservoirs and pumping stations - that were put in place especially in association with Public Health reforms from the mid nineteenth century: they were used in low-lying areas where the topography was insufficient for a reservoir to achieve the required water pressure: cast-iron tanks were used in England from the 1830s, the great majority of these towers dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This is a substantial and imposing water tower, built in Romanesque Revival style with pilastering and tall arches rising to a pavilion roof and louvred turret. It is part of a very distinctive group of such towers in Essex, very similar in style to those at Bocking (Lyons Hall) and West Mersea (Upland Road) which date from the 1920s, and to that at Wivenhoe which dates from 1901. These water towers, designed in the manner of a 'campanile', represented an elaborate architectural variation on the theme of the traditional brick water tower, the most notable example in a national context being the 'Jumbo' tower in Colchester (listed grade II). This example, on account of its fine proportions and use of detail, is a most notable example.