Very jolly game with a first year class asking them to guess the functions of the following buildings:

So the answer is: they are all Victorian pumping stations.

I recently read marvellous Shire Books pamphlet on them (as a professional architectural historian I should probably be snooty about Shire, but not a bit of it). Sewage often 1st job of municipal government, so they made a blast of it, resulting in some flabbergasting buildings.

I'm especially keen to visit John Henry Chamberlain and William Martin's magical neo-gothic pumping station at Whitacre, Warwickshire (c.1872).

And then there are the phantasmagorically elaborate interiors. Here is Papplewick, Leicester, & Crossness.