Drive into Pembrey Country Park and you pass it: a red-brick building with a white clock tower, standing behind fencing on a levelled plot of bare ground.
The Old Pump House is up for sale again.
Christie & Co has relisted the Factory Road site with offers invited. When it went on the market in June last year it was priced at £1.25m, and it is back with the same firm, handled by a different agent.
Fourteen months on, the site being offered has also grown. Last year’s listing covered 4.6 acres. This one runs to 27.49 acres across two plots, with the pump house itself at the edge of a 4.3-acre parcel.
What the buyer gets permission to build
Three consents come with it, all from Carmarthenshire Council.
The pump house has permission, granted on 10 November 2021, to become 16 holiday apartments: 11 studios and five duplex units with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, each with a parking space and a balcony.
The land next to it has permission, granted on 15 January 2025, for 23 lodges. Thirteen sleep six, eight sleep four, and two are accessible units sleeping five.
A third consent, from 27 May 2025, covers a single-storey cycle hire unit and a new access point.
Started, then stopped
Work has begun on the building itself. It has been stripped back ready for first fix, one elevation has been underpinned after structural advice, and water, waste and electricity are connected. The ground around it has been cleared and levelled.
The lodges have not been started.
It pumped Llanelli’s water until 2000
The pump house was built around 1937 to 1939 and worked until 2000, storing and pumping clean water to Swiss Valley Reservoir when demand in Llanelli called for it.
Before the country park existed, the land was industrial, including the Royal Ordnance Factory built for the war. Llanelli Borough Council began turning it into parkland in the 1970s.
The first application, in July 2021, was made by Pembrey Leisure Ltd and covered 16 holiday lets and 13 lodges. The lodge count has since grown to 23.
The sales pitch
Christie & Co, whose business agent Jack Guest is handling the sale, describes the site as a rare find in one of the UK’s most popular tourist destinations, and an opportunity for an operator to design their own park.
The agents say Pembrey Country Park is the most visited attraction in Wales, citing a Welsh Government figure of 405,444 visitors. That figure is from 2020, a year when attractions across Wales were closed for long stretches by Covid restrictions.
The sale is freehold, structured as an asset sale, with the building rated EPC D.
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