Hewenden Reservoir

Hewenden Reservoir is a fresh-water reservoir near to Cullingworth in West Yorkshire, England. The Bradford Corporation built the reservoir, which was flooded in 1845, and is now part of the Yorkshire Water portfolio.

Hewenden Reservoir
A white cottage in the foreground, a dam head and water in the middle ground, and a railway viaduct in the background
Dam head showing Hewenden Viaduct
Relief map of West Yorkshire
Relief map of West Yorkshire
Hewenden Reservoir
LocationCullingworth, West Yorkshire, England
Coordinates53.816°N 1.889°W / 53.816; -1.889
TypeReservoir
Primary outflowsHarden Beck
Catchment area2,960 acres (1,196 ha)
Managing agencyYorkshire Water
First flooded1845
Surface area15 acres (6 ha)
Average depth141 feet (43 m)
Water volume8,915,400 cubic feet (252,457 m3)
Surface elevation672 feet (204.8 m)
References[1][2]

History

Hewenden Reservoir was built as a result of the Bradford Waterworks Act of 1842. The act allowed the Bradford Corporation to abstract large volumes of water from Many Wells Spring, which supplied Hewenden Beck (Harden Beck).[3] This concerned mill owners further downstream on Harden Beck.[4] As a condition of the act, the reservoir at Hewenden was constructed as a compensation Reservoir, which would guarantee a steady flow of water in Harden Beck.[5]

During construction, "three large vertical cracks" appeared in one of the culverts that had just been built, and so remedial action was necessary to the dam walls.[6] By January 1845, the remediation works were completed and the dam wall was complete. Minor works were finalised in the same year and flooding commenced in late spring, though by June, when the reservoir was about 66% full, the dam wall was observed as having collapsed in places.[7][8] The final cost of the reservoir was £4,856 (equivalent to £511,000 in 2021).[9]

The reservoir now feeds water into Harden Beck, with Hewenden itself being fed by Milking Hole Beck and Denholme Beck, the latter of which flows out from Doe Park Reservoir in Denholme, which has been culverted.[10][11] Hewenden Reservoir is now owned and operated by Yorkshire Water.[12]

The reservoir is noted for being one of the top ten recorded wettest places in Britain; in June 1956, 6.1 inches (155 mm) of rain fell in 120 minutes,[13][14] at that time, the largest amount of rainfall ever recorded in Yorkshire.[15] After a long period where the veracity of this claim was doubted in some meteorological circles, a review of the data and weather systems on the day, determined that 6 inches (152.4 mm) fell in 105 minutes.[note 1][17] In 2008, the peak flow exiting the reservoir was noted at 2,800 cubic feet per second (79 m3/s).[18]

Notes
  1. Data is different between sources. Some state 6.1 inches (150 mm), others state 6 inches (150 mm) in 105 minutes. However, studies have shown that a "convective instability over England caused severe thunderstorms and assessments of the storm efficiency gave results commensurate with the observation".[16]

References
  1. "Hewenden Reservoir". getoutside.ordnancesurvey.co.uk. Retrieved 3 January 2022.
  2. "Hewenden Reservoir". eip.ceh.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 11 June 2016. Retrieved 3 January 2022.
  3. Taggart 2002, p. 11.
  4. Hudson, W. H., ed. (1856). The acts relating to the transfer of the Bradford waterworks to the Corporation of Bradford. Bradford: Firth & Field. p. 177. OCLC 79158354.
  5. Cudworth, William (1896). Manningham, Heaton, and Allerton : (townships of Bradford) treated historically and topographically. Bradford: Cudworth. p. 324. OCLC 1069555989.
  6. "The New Water Works". The Bradford Observer. No. 538. Column D. 4 July 1844. p. 5. OCLC 17641939.
  7. "Bradford Water Works". The Bradford Observer. No. 547. Column B. 23 January 1845. p. 6. OCLC 17641939.
  8. "The Bradford Water Works". The Bradford Observer. No. 571. Column E. 12 June 1845. p. 5. OCLC 17641939.
  9. "Special meeting of the water works company". The Bradford Observer. No. 581. Column A. 21 August 1845. p. 6. OCLC 17641939.
  10. "OL21" (Map). South Pennines. 1:25,000. Explorer. Ordnance Survey. 2015. ISBN 978-0-319-242-60-5.
  11. Flood studies report : five years on : proceedings of a conference organized by the Institution of Civil Engineers and held in Manchester, 22-24, July 1980. London: T. Telford. 1981. p. 107. ISBN 0-7277-0120-7.
  12. Stanford, Mike (7 February 2018). "Is Yorkshire's best reservoir in Bradford?". Bradford Telegraph and Argus. Retrieved 31 May 2022.
  13. "Britain's 10 wettest places". The Telegraph. 1 November 2019. Retrieved 3 January 2022.
  14. "After the tornado... Six more freak weather events that shook Yorkshire". The Yorkshire Post. 14 September 2016. Retrieved 3 January 2022.
  15. Glasspoole, John (12 January 1957). "Erratic Rainfall In 1956". The Times. No. 53737. p. 4. ISSN 0140-0460.
  16. Shaw, Elizabeth M. (1994). Hydrology in practice (3 ed.). London: Chapman & Hall. p. 233. ISBN 0-7487-4448-7.
  17. Dukes, Michael; Eden, Philip (1997). "13: Phew! What a scorcher; weather records and extremes". In Hulme, Mike; Barrow, Elaine (eds.). Climates of the British Isles : present, past, and future. London: Routledge. p. 277. ISBN 0-415-13016-6.
  18. Airey & Carruthers 2008, p. 2.

Sources
  • Airey, M; Carruthers, G (January 2008). "Bradford Area Reservoirs' Group-Flood Routing Remedial Works at Leeming, Doe Park and Hewenden Reservoirs". Ensuring Reservoir Safety into the Future: Proceedings of the 15th Conference of the British Dam Society at the University of Warwick from 10–13 September 2008: 297–308. doi:10.1680/ersitf.35225.0025. ISBN 978-0-7277-3915-5.
  • Taggart, Michael (2002). Private property and abuse of rights in Victorian England : the story of Edward Pickles and the Bradford water supply. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-925687-X.
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