The Stony Stratford Pump House was built in 1884. At the same time a water tower was built on higher ground at the corner of Augustus Road and Calverton Road. Their joint use ensured the supply of water to the town of Stony Stratford.
The pump house was operational between 1884 and 1950 but due to the development of larger reservoirs the pump house and water tower fell into disuse.
The water tower was demolished in 1950 and in its place two bungalows were built for retired people. The pump house fell in to a derelict state for some 40 years. During this period the property appeared to change hands between developers and speculators, but nobody actually touched or maintained the fabric of the building or grounds.
Both the pump house and water tower were built by a local builder, John Franklin, who was contracted by the Stony Stratford Parish Council.
To this day, the Franklin family are still in Stony Stratford and operational in the building industry.
Initially the water pumps in the pump house were driven by diesel but were later converted to electric power in the late 1930s (see 1940 elevation plans). Between 1884 and 1931 water came from three artesian wells, the deepest being a dizzy 120 feet (see 1935 site plans above). Water was pumped to the water tower and then supplied to the population of Stony Stratford via stand-pipes. In 1931 a new system was installed involving a reservoir on top of the hill at the southern end of Stony Stratford. Two six-inch pipes fed water from the reservoir across the fields to the pump house where chloride was added. The water was gravity-fed via the down pipe back to the base of the water tower, where it joined the existing pipe system.