Sunday, August 30, 2026 Search My Trip EnglishChinese
World news · travel · culture
Taiwan The Taiwan Times
Taiwan's window to the world

Jumbo Water Tower

United Kingdom

The 186th tallest tower in the world

m

Jumbo Water Tower is a water tower at the Balkerne Gate in Colchester, Essex, and the largest water tower in the UK. Charles Clegg (c. 1855 – c. 1904), the Borough Surveyor and Engineer, designed the structure. The tower is 40.1 metres (132 ft) tall overall and contains 1.2 million red bricks. The tower was nicknamed 'Jumbo' after the London Zoo elephant as a term of derision in 1882 by Reverend John Irvine, who was annoyed that the tower dwarfed his nearby rectory at St Mary-at-the-Walls.

Building data from Wikidata (CC0); heights normalised. Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).

More tall towers in United Kingdom

  1. BT Tower189 m
  2. Spinnaker Tower170 m
  3. Brighton i360162 m
  4. Blackpool Tower158.1 m
  5. National Lift Tower127.5 m

Other tall towers worldwide

  1. Warsaw radio mast · Konstantynów646.4 m
  2. Tokyo Skytree · Oshiage634 m
  3. KRDK-TV mast · Traill County627.8 m
  4. Diversified Communications Tower · South Carolina609.6 m
  5. KATV tower · Jefferson County609.6 m
  6. KVLY-TV mast · Blanchard605 m
  7. Abraj Al Bait · Mecca601 m
  8. Canton Tower · Chigang Subdistrict600 m