Lifetime Lab

Detached single-storey former weighhouse, built 1858, with two-bay original portion to south-west corner incorporated in rebuilt former workshop. Now in use as school resource centre. Pitched artificial slate roof with monitor light. Alternating red sandstone and grey limestone stonework with cut limestone plinth to south-west corner and render walls to remainder of building. Round-headed door openings with alternating voussoirs, opening to east partially blocked with timber casement window, timber battened door to west opening. Segmental- and square-headed openings to extension with recent window and door fittings. Cast-iron weighbridge, with maker's mark and upright scales. Scale has fluted shaft and curving arm. Square-profile rubble stone piers with cut limestone facing west elevation having red brick caps, accessing cobblestone laneway to west of site. Set within former water works complex.

Cork Corporation Waterworks first began operating in the 1760s and was the oldest continuously used municipal water supply site in Ireland at the time of its decommissioning in 1993. The nineteenth-century saw increased demand on the water supply and this weighhouse was part of a new pumping station, the largest of its type to be built in Ireland, which was completed by John Benson, the City Architect, in 1858. The weighhouse was used for weighing coal, drawn from the quays and transport through the gate and lane to the west. Coal was used in the boiler house located to the east to power three steam engines located in the engine room. The survival of the scales, though not in the original location, and weighbridge adds to the group's context and setting.