Baitings Reservoir

Baitings Reservoir is a large water supply reservoir operated by Yorkshire Water close to Ripponden in the West Yorkshire Pennines, England. It lies in the valley of the River Ryburn and is the higher of two reservoirs built to supply Wakefield with water and was completed in 1956.[1] The lower reservoir is Ryburn Reservoir.

Baitings Reservoir
Picture of reservoir surrounded by moorland
View from Great Manshead Hill
Relief map of West Yorkshire
Relief map of West Yorkshire
Baitings Reservoir
LocationWest Yorkshire
Coordinates53°39′57″N 1°59′25″W
TypeReservoir
Primary outflowsRiver Ryburn
Basin countriesUnited Kingdom
Built1956
Max. length3,250 feet (990 m)
Max. width1,035 feet (315 m)

History

Wakefield Corporation Waterworks started impounding the valley of the River Ryburn in the 1930s, with Ryburn Reservoir being completed in 1933.[2] Construction on Baitings took place 20 years later with completion in 1956. Baitings is a place name that derives from the Old Norse of Beit (pasture) and Eng (meadow),[3] Baitings Bridge, on an old road linking Yorkshire and Lancashire, was to be flooded under the reservoir so a concrete viaduct was built.[4][5] During spells of very hot weather and drought conditions, the old packhorse bridge is revealed.[6]

The dam head is a curved structure that is 1,540 feet (470 m) long and over 160 feet (50 m) high.[7] The reservoir covers 59 acres (24 hectares) and has a catchment of 1,830 acres (742 hectares), and when it is full, it holds over 113,000,000 cubic feet (3,190,000 m3) of water.[8] The dam took eight years to complete at a cost of £1.4 million, and is located at 840 feet (256 m) above sea level.[9][10] A tunnel connects reservoirs in valleys to the north with Baitings to allow for the transfer of water. Manshead Tunnel is 8,000 feet (2,400 m) long and was opened in 1962.[11][12]

In 1989, the body of a man was found at the bottom of the reservoir during a period of dry weather, when the water was 40 feet (12 m) shallower than normal.[13] He had been murdered and his body was weighted down with a pick axe. The crime was featured on Crimewatch and remains unsolved.[14]

References
  1. Baitings Reservoir, Yorkshire Water. Retrieved 24 February 2009.
  2. "Walking: It's wild and it's woolly out west". Yorkshire Evening Post. 4 February 2017. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
  3. Goodall, Armitage (1914). Place-names of South-west Yorkshire : that is so much of the West Riding as lies south of the Aire from Keighley onwards. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 65. OCLC 504339898.
  4. "Baitings Bridge - TWA00200 · Pennine Horizons Digital Archive". penninehorizons.org. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
  5. Langdale, Thomas (1822). A Topographical Dictionary of Yorkshire. Northallerton: Langdale. p. 228. OCLC 5211910.
  6. "Bridging the gap in Yorkshire between the past and present". The Yorkshire Post. 1 October 2018. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
  7. Judge, Tony (June 2012). "Technical visit: BDS conference 2012 – tour of Baitings, Boothwood and Scammonden reservoirs". Dams and Reservoirs. 22 (2): 73–74. doi:10.1680/dare.12.00016.
  8. "Baitings Reservoir Water Body ID 31150". eip.ceh.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 11 June 2016. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
  9. "Baitings Dam, Ripponden - MIC00105 · Pennine Horizons Digital Archive". penninehorizons.org. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
  10. "Baitings Reservoir". environment.data.gov.uk. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
  11. "Cragg Vale and many reservoirs" (PDF). nationaltrail.co.uk. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
  12. "Cutting through 1,140 foot high Manshead Hill was completed when the..." gettyimages.co.uk. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
  13. "Body found in reservoir". infoweb.newsbank.com. 28 September 1989. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
  14. Parveen, Nazia (10 January 2017). "Fresh bid to solve murder of mechanic almost 30 years ago". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Baitings Reservoir.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.