{"id":6616,"date":"2025-07-16T06:46:40","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T06:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/?p=6616"},"modified":"2025-07-16T06:46:40","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T06:46:40","slug":"mcalpine-to-restore-englands-largest-victorian-water-tower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/mcalpine-to-restore-englands-largest-victorian-water-tower\/","title":{"rendered":"McAlpine to restore England\u2019s largest Victorian water tower"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sir Robert McAlpine Special Projects has landed the job to restore Colchester\u2019s iconic \u2018Jumbo\u2019 water tower in a major heritage-led regeneration scheme.<\/p>\n

The Grade II* listed Balkerne Water Tower is the largest surviving Victorian municipal water tower in England.<\/p>\n

It will be overhauled and converted into a fully accessible destination with visitor experience.<\/p>\n

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Built in 1882 using 1.25 million bricks and 142 tonnes of cast iron, the tower was decommissioned in 1984 and has remained out of use for over 40 years.<\/p>\n

Pre-construction works begin this month with the main construction phase due to start in December 2025.<\/p>\n

The project is being delivered by North Essex Heritage, which secured a 150-year lease on the tower in 2021.<\/p>\n

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Funding has come from the UK Government, Colchester City Council, Historic England and The National Lottery Heritage Fund.<\/p>\n

Mike Coleman, operations director at McAlpine Special Projects, said the firm would draw on its experience working with historic structures to retain the character and architectural features of the 141-year-old structure.<\/p>\n

The design team includes conservation architect Purcell and heritage consultant Focus Consultants.<\/p>\n

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from Construction Enquirer https:\/\/ift.tt\/n7XjFyq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sir Robert McAlpine Special Projects has landed the job to restore Colchester\u2019s iconic \u2018Jumbo\u2019 water tower in a major heritage-led regeneration scheme. The Grade II* listed Balkerne Water Tower is the largest surviving Victorian municipal water tower in England. It will be overhauled and converted into a fully accessible destination with visitor experience. Built in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":150,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-6616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-construction-enquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6617,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6616\/revisions\/6617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}