The old North Dock pump house

From a distance this dockside building looks, for all the world, like a church but its appearance hides an important industrial past and a very different current use.

The dock and the hydraulic accumulator tower are in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, S Wales.

The tower now forms part of a restaurant, which, to the casual onlooker, looks like a converted church but it  actually once housed a tall water cylinder and the mechanisms that were used to operate, amongst other things, hydraulic rams that opened and closed the tidal gates to the historic North Dock. The movable dock gates have now been replaced by a non-navigable sluice but the hydraulic rams which controlled them are now on display on the dockside. 

One of the buildings, used now as part of the restaurant, were used to house the steam powered pumps which pumped water up the tower. It became a lead works after the dock closed for commercial purposes.

Llanelli North Dock was built between 1897 and 1902, by Sir Alexander Rendel and Partners. It was used for the export of coal, tinplate and copper. In 1944, during  the prelude to D day,  the United States Armed Forces used the port to store 5,000 tons of aviation fuel.

It is no longer used commercially. The water depth has been  reduced (at its deepest the dock is about 6 feet deep) and the dock has been converted to a recreational water sports lake (popular for canoe polo). New housing and office developments have now replaced what was, until as late as the 1970s, an ugly yet bustling  industrial landscape. Even during its industrial past swimming in the dock was something which was not officially sanctioned but was very popular.

The tower is set back from the dock edge at the north end of the east side of the dock, by the west bank of the tidal Afon Lliedi. It was originally built in  1900. The restaurant was converted from the engine house complex.

The tower provided hydraulic power for the operation of many types of machinery around the dock with the tower used to store water used to provide hydraulic pressure. As well as controlling  the main dock gates  hydraulic power was used for moving the the coal loading stages, cranes, and turning capstans (these are still visible on the dock side). It also operated a railway swing bridge which is long since gone.   The building had attractive stone dressings on the tower and north facade and slate roofs. At one time the slate roofs were mostly substituted  by  corrugated iron but they have been replaced during the refurb. The stone facing to the buildings have now been extended, adding further to the church-like appearance. The building is now adjacent to office buildings and a pleasant riverside walkway runs at the back of both sets of buildings along Afon Lliedi.

The restaurant closed just before the  Covid 19 lock down but reopened under a different name in 2022.