Clydach Pumphouse. In l887 a pump-house was built north-east of the aqueduct.1 It had stipulated under the terms of the Swansea Canal Act that water could not be fed to the canal from watercourses above (north of) the intake of the Ynyspenllwch Tinplate Works without incurring penalties. By l887 few if any boats were trading above the seventh lock of the canal and then only the water which flowed through the bypasses was subject to heavy tolls.2 Presumably the owners of the Ynyspenllwch Tinplate Works kept close watch over a water-gauge on the bypass of the lock. The pump house engine, fired by Lancashire boilers, powered a 457 mm (l8-inch) suction pipe taking three minutes to fill a cylindrical tank direct from the Tawe.3 From the tank the water flowed through a trough, level with the canal, either into the pound of Lock 5-6 or into the 7,640m pound below Lock 5 via a culvert to the lower feeder (F.3). This branch of the lower feeder crossed the Lower Clydach River in a wooden trough supported on iron pipes, the stubs of which remain on the south side. A stone portal with a keystone dated l890 set into a rockfaced masonry revetment wall, adjoins the south elevation of the aqueduct on the east bank of the river leading into a brick-vaulted tunnel. The building was used as an office before demolition in the late l950s and now the foundations and bases of water-channels have been laid-out in a riverside lawn.

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1. The datestone of the chimney is now in the garden of 47 Hebron Road, Clydach.
2. P.R.O. RAIL 876 12 X/K 3595.
3. v.i. Glyn Phillips of Glais, the son of a canal boatman.

Stephen Hughes, 14.08.2006.