Reservoir Nerds

The landscape directly around where I live is littered with water board infrastructure: aqueducts, wells, inspection chambers, gates and stiles, all to support the delivery of fresh water to the cities and towns of industrial Lancashire of old.  However, littered is the wrong word as it would indicate a random throw of objects, rather than the carefully ordered and designed system which it most definitely is.  These enormous infrastructure projects of the 1890s and 1930s had major public health benefits to the people living south of the Lake District. I am almost always minded to think of the classic Life of Brian scene, highlighting what benefits the Romans brought. 

One of the joys (and this may be a little nerdy) is seeing the small, and large, embellishments of design in the infrastructure, the matching gates, the totally unnecessary, yet delightful ‘reservoir’ gothic, the staves of the ironwork gates being of alternating heights, or a neat arc.

There are the straining wells of Haweswater and Thirlmere, the small conduits that channel water to local reservoirs, and my favourites, the surveying posts above Longsleddale, used in the mapping and constructing the pipeline south.  In the past, I feel really fortunate to have visited the room at Watchgate Water Treatment Works, where there are many of the original hand drawn maps and plans, and a very long time ago, meeting a member of staff from North West Water as was, who assured me that his department, including him, still used dowsing rods.

There is an old but still live website with quite a bit of reservoir infrastructure information, a real labour of love from Neil and Pete.