Sheet Piling Specialist Plugs Britain’s Reservoirs
Reservoirs started to appear on the British landscape in Victorian times, with the age of some being one reason why Sheet Piling (UK) Ltd has acquired immense expertise in the area of reservoir repair. Installing sheet pile cut-off walls that prevent water seepage has become almost second nature.
Many of us know and love reservoirs as leisure locations, for fishing, sailing or birdwatching for example, but is there anything else to know about some of our leading reservoirs? Sheet Piling UK endeavoured to find out.
Reservoir repair where we have installed sheet pile cut-off walls
The natural place for us to start was at some of the reservoirs at which we have installed steel sheet piles as a dam repair solution. During these reservoir repair and remediation projects, we have using methodologies such as Willowstick leak detection surveys and silent and vibrationless piling, as well as devising innovative means of achieving sheet piling. This has included minimising further damage to the crests of embankments, by basing many piling operations on the water and constructing special floating pontoons to get equipment in situ.
One of our sheet pile installations was at the King George V Reservoir, located near to Chingford and so named because it was originally opened by the royal monarch, back in 1913. Another, the William Girling Reservoir, on the other hand, was named in honour of a former chairman of the Metropolitan Water Board.
Having also worked at Redmires Reservoir near Sheffield, we can also say that we have helped protect a reservoir that was created in the aftermath of the devastating Sheffield cholera epidemic of 1832, which demonstrated the huge need for clean drinking water.
Other royal connections
Just a short hop from Island Barns reservoir near West Molesey, where we have also carried out sheet pile installation, lies the Queen Elizabeth II reservoir. This reservoir, also run by our client, Thames Water, became home to the world’s largest floating solar farm in 2016, as a means to offset the company’s energy usage. No fewer than 23,000 panels were installed.
United Utilities’ Yeoman Hey Reservoir, on Saddleworth Moor, received a visit from King Taufa’ ahau Tupou IV of Tonga in 1981, when the foreign king was visiting the UK for the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. A commemorative stone marks this fact.
Commemorative plaques and stones can be found at many reservoirs but perhaps one of the most tongue-in-cheek commemorations is the effigy carved into a large stone on to top of a dry stone wall at Yarrow Reservoir, Lancashire. This is said to depict an inspector from the Liverpool Corporation, who had made workers lives a misery.
Hidden pasts
Creating reservoirs has sometimes led to villages and hamlets having to be vacated, to make way for the new water storage facility. In the case of the Fernilee Reservoir in Derbyshire, inaugurated in 1932, it was actually the Chilworth Gunpowder Mill that was submerged, with this gunpowder manufacturing plant having been in operation from the 16th century to World War I.
At certain reservoirs, long hot summers lead to the water levels falling to such an extent that the area’s past emerges once more. At Glencorse Reservoir, in Midlothian, the 13th century chapel of St Catherine’s of the Hopes, is submerged under the water. At Haweswater, in the Lake District, where the villages of Measland and Marsdale Green were flooded, the village of Marsdale Green has been known to reappear. That must have been quite a sight for the golden eagles living here until around 2015 – then the only place in England at which this species was found.
Meanwhile, at Drift Reservoir, west of Penzance in Cornwall, the valley of Trewidden Vean was flooded for the reservoir to be formed and houses and roads sometimes re-emerge during heatwaves.
Sometimes, whilst constructing reservoirs, other pasts have been discovered. In North Ceredigion, Iron Age cairns came to light when the Nant-y-Moch reservoir was being built. In 1858, when construction began at the Piethorne Reservoir in Greater Manchester, a Celtic spearhead with a five-inch blade was uncovered, highlighting that there had been significant human presence in the area during the Bronze Age.
Vital role in World War II
Some of Britain’s reservoirs played a major role in World War II, acting as test sites for the trialling of the bouncing bomb and the training arenas for the Dambusters Raid. One of those was Derwent Reservoir in Derbyshire, where 617 Squadron practised low-level flight for Operation Chastise (the Dambusters Raid). A commemorative plaque now acts as a reminder and there is an exhibition, in the Derwent Valley Museum in one of the towers of the dam houses, to mark the squadron’s achievements
Abberton Reservoir, in Essex, built 1935-1939, was also used by 617 Squadron. In the early stages of the war, it was feared that German seaplanes might land on the water, with this leading to 312 naval mines being laid in a grid across the water, anchored by steel cables. The reservoir was also used for special bouncing bomb practice, with the final run at Abberton regarded as the dress rehearsal for the attack in the Ruhr Valley. That last run took place on 14th of May 1943, as short time before the Edersee Dam was attacked on the 16th.
Another reservoir – Eyebrook in Leicestershire – was a third reservoir that dummied as the Möhne Reservoir, in test-flight bombing operations in May 1943.
Reservoir Firsts and World Record Achievements
When it comes to reservoir ‘firsts’, Lamaload Reservoir, near Rainow in Cheshire, was the first concrete reservoir in the UK. Cheddar Reservoir, in Somerset, was the first British reservoir to permit sailing.
Ogston Reservoir, near Ashover in Derbyshire, acted as the launchpad for the world’s fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe on February 7, 2005, as this was where record-breaking Ellen MacArthur learned to sail.
TV dramas
Pontsticill Reservoir near Merthyr Tydfil featured in the opening scenes and final episode of the BBC drama, The Pact (2021), but perhaps the greatest TV drama surrounded Toddbrook Reservoir, near Whaley Bridge, in August 2019.
The dislodgement of concrete panels at the 1838 dam really brought home to the UK just how vulnerable many Victorian reservoirs are, especially when a catalogue of issues stretching from the 1930s to the 1980s were made known. Heavy rain caused the issues in 2019, at a reservoir at which the tallest wall ever built for a canal reservoir had been constructed in 1841. The fears led to the evacuation of local people and tussles with those refusing to leave their homes, whilst the dropping of 400 tonnes of aggregate, by an RAF Chinook helicopter, into the area of the dam in which damage had occurred, made compelling TV viewing.
Solving leakage issues with reservoir repair
Whilst the way in which Sheet Piling UK cuts off water leakage from dams and redresses deterioration in the puddle clay core is highly advanced, we should not believe our forefathers were blind to the issue.
One pioneer of leakage resolution methodologies was engineer Thomas Hawksley. His work at the Tunstall Reservoir (1873) in Tyne and Wear, to address the problem of water percolating through fissures in the rock, led to him initially extending a cut-off trench with brickwork and concrete. When this didn’t resolve the issue, he adopted a novel technique – that of pouring and pumping cement grout into holes bored into the rock below the trench alignment.
When this proved successful, he attempted the same at the Crown Reservoir in Rochdale, constructed in 1868 and opened in 1877. Here, he injected grout under the cut-off of the embankment but leaks reappeared in 1886, requiring his attention once more. So troublesome was this reservoir that he is said to have declared that “he wished he had never seen Rochdale.”
Nowadays, the solution that sheet pile installation can provide for leaking reservoirs is a highly efficient and long-lasting one that is likely to be required at many other dams in the coming years. Given all the in-depth expertise we have acquired in this area, we are sure that Sheet Piling UK will be involved in many future reservoir repair projects, perhaps even at some of the reservoirs that are currently noted for other things, other than water seepage.
If you are a water authority operating a reservoir where the puddle clay core is deteriorating, please get in touch. Our in-house design team will create a bespoke solution for your reservoir seepage issues and channel their experience into the creation of an optimum approach. To find out more about sheet pile reservoir repair, please call us on 01772 794141 or email enquiries@sheetpilinguk.com
- Ends -NOTES TO EDITORS
Sheet Piling (UK) Limited is one of the UK's leading piling contractors. Owning and operating a comprehensive range of specialist piling equipment Sheet Piling (UK) Ltd also carry extensive stocks of new and used piles enabling rapid reaction to any urgent requirements or emergency situations.