Rethinking Reservoir Landscapes

Adis Kovačević | Lancaster University

Water impounding schemes have been around since antiquity: from the drought-prone plains of India, over irrigation systems of Egypt, and to Roman dams in present-day Spain. Security in water provision represented – and continues to be – a major human preoccupation. The concerns resulting from industrialisation, however, rendered water comparable in importance to, and conducive to the production of, other commodities, such as energy, that continue to drive socio-economic systems today. Although water management at present mainly revolves around domestic supply, the damming of river valleys and the changing use of reservoirs have reflected water’s fluid role in sustaining societies since the late-eighteenth century, and in turn affected the environment beyond that of reservoirs themselves.

Prior to the emergence of railways, efficient cargo transport around industrial Britain was made possible by a growing system of canals, and by the late 1700s reservoirs became integral components of a number of canal networks. Mill owners were among the first to raise opposition to reservoirs, as natural waterways were modified by impounding schemes further upstream. The provision of compensation water as part of reservoir projects, however, and reliable waterflow secured in the face of seasonal fluctuation, ensured that these schemes became indispensable to growing factory complexes as well. Increases in population, coupled with the engineering prowess of canal schemes, led to the construction of the first reservoir used primarily as a source of domestic supply at Whinhill (near Glasgow) in 1796. By the close of the following century, major metropolitan centres across Britain had successfully put forward large-scale schemes in rural valleys that would soon trigger discussions on reservoirs' roles in changing land use and the aesthetic value of the landscapes.

Rochdale canal was completed in 1804 and was the first in the UK to be fed entirely by reservoirs. Image courtesy of Tim Green CC BY-SA 2.0

Manchester’s proximity to the water-rich Peak District proved advantageous for the local economy for a relatively short period in the mid-nineteenth century, before supplies from the Lake District further afield were identified as a potential resource for both Mancunians and their industrial employers. Following the submersion of communities in the Longdendale Valley of the Peak District, the struggle of Lakeland locals in the late-nineteenth century for the protection of Thirlmere, and later of Haweswater and Ullswater, became illustrative of reservoirs’ central position within a fraught environmental and political dynamic. Putting forward new reservoir projects in the period normally entailed the passage of an act of parliament, and for a short while the Thirlmere scheme was delayed by over thirty petitions against the Manchester Corporation’s bill for the adaptation of Thirlmere into a reservoir. Although the legal battle was lost with the newly proposed, and passed, bill of 1879 which ensured locals’ access to the lake and featured an adjusted aqueduct proposal, the efforts did aid to the founding of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty in 1895, as well as stimulate discussions on landscape protection.

The divide between infrastructure and landscape came to be complemented by that between the city and the rural hinterland as well. The increased living standards and public health of urban populations came at a cost for rural communities who, if not removed from prospective reservoir sites entirely, were sometimes subjected to new regimes of access to and interaction with what they held to be their own waterscapes.

Thirlmere reservoir around the completion of works in 1894. Access to the immediate environs was still limited in 1946 to protect water against contamination. Image in public domain.

Planning water impounding projects from within cities was not without its own controversies. Part of the rapidly increasing water demand had to do with mitigating outbreaks of disease which dense industrial areas were too prone to. The outbreak of cholera in London in 1854, followed by the doubling of the city’s population during the first half of the century, led to the founding of the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, and ushered in a series of reservoir projects across London and surrounding areas in an attempt to secure good-quality water for the inhabitants.

It was the emerging effect of droughts, however, upon the city’s supply in the late 1800s that triggered calls for a municipal takeover of water management against the government’s preference for private undertakers whose business was now threatened by the weather. Londoners’ expectation for reliable access to water was only partially appeased before the turn of the twentieth century, and municipal control of water would occur earlier in cities such as Manchester where the local waterworks were transferred into public ownership in 1847. Ad-hoc management persisted elsewhere, and the drawing and redrawing of administrative boundaries in the UK was the reality of water provision before new policies in the 1970s resulted in, although not a fully nationalised, a more efficient supply system.

Reservoirs have come to reflect a variety of socio-spatial concerns, but their material presence across rural and urban landscapes has proved to be at least as diverse. Although the radically modified topographies of flooded rural valleys would often paint a dim picture of reservoir planning, water impounding projects, and the construction of associated infrastructure, such as service reservoirs, proliferated within cities more subtly. Reservoirs constructed below built-up areas nowadays remain the end points of distribution systems, but cities lying in flatter parts of England went on to feature water towers and pump stations as the more recognisable components of reservoir networks.

Contribution to local habitats is likewise disputable within flooded river valleys, but the introduction of reservoirs into cities throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries resulted in improved open spaces, and at times led to environmental designation, such as for the Lee Valley reservoir chain within Greater London, which eventually became part of a Special Protection Area and a Ramsar site in 2000.

Water tower at Flaybrick reservoir in Birkenhead. Constructed in the 1860s, the tower features distinctive Classical rendering as the most prominent part of the reservoir. Image courtesy of Phil Nash CC BY-SA 4.0

Southernmost part of Lee Valley reservoirs. The chain is a group of 13 reservoirs in northeast London and together with the same-name Regional Park is the city’s largest green area. Image courtesy of Russ Garrett CC BY-SA 4.0

Other implications of water infrastructure have been less detectible. The transport of cargo and labourers during reservoir construction would sometimes entail the laying of temporary railway lines by contractors, to be subsequently removed upon completion of construction work. The supply of stone blocks for some of the early dam and aqueduct structures would, on the other hand, result in the opening of new or use of existing quarry sites. Afforestation became a complementary byproduct of reservoir design throughout the twentieth century as well, with the Derwent Valley Water Board engaging in an extensive woodland scheme around Howden, Derwent and Ladybower reservoirs in the Peak District, as a means of conserving water within gathering grounds and preventing soil erosion.

In use for stonework for centuries, Bole Hill quarry was a major extraction site for the construction of Howden and Derwent dams in the Peak District in the early twentieth century. The site was connected to a railway line no longer in existence, whereas the area is now of recreational and environmental interest. Image courtesy of Graham Hogg CC BY-SA 2.0

Defining sites of industrial character, such as reservoirs, eludes some of the approaches applied to other architecturally significant pieces of the built environment. A process of resource extraction and product supply as an embodiment of spatial, technical, and political concerns is in many respects prone to change more than other building stocks, and as such renders its infrastructural components highly susceptible to disuse. The covered reservoir at Toxteth in Liverpool, dating to the 1850s, is at present a multipurpose event venue. Whereas many former buildings of water infrastructure around the UK have been adapted for hospitality and even domestic purposes. While policy changes may in future challenge the original use of primary reservoir structures as well, a pressing question in their adaptation might be that of the ways and extents to which wider reservoir sites of the last two and a half centuries have shaped both physical and social environments.

Toxteth reservoir, also known as the High Park reservoir, is a covered reservoir located in Liverpool. It was constructed in the 1850s and features a corner tower with an ornate entrance below. Image courtesy of John S Turner CC BY-SA 4.0

---

Further reading:

• John Broich, London: Water and the Making of the Modern City, 1st edn (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), lxvi <https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt5hjn4d>.

• Sir John James Harwood, and Thirlmere Water Scheme, History and Description of the Thirlmere Water Scheme (Blacklock, 1895). 

• Patrick McCully, Silenced Rivers : The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams, Enlarged & updated ed. (Zed Books, 2001). 

• Elizabeth Porter, Water Management in England and Wales (Cambridge University Press, 1978). 

• Norman Alfred Fisher Smith, A History of Dams (P. Davies, 1971).

Adis Kovačević is a PhD student at the Lancaster School of Architecture and is conducting research on reservoir history in the UK. His master’s thesis studied the cultural landscape and vernacular architecture of Gornji Stoliv, Montenegro. He has formerly practiced in adaptation of historic residences and restoration of listed monuments in the Bay of Kotor.