The Sheffield Waterworks Company is most remembered for the collapse of the company’s Dale Dike Dam, which inundated the Loxley and Don Valleys, killing at least 250 people in March 1864.
But for this catastrophe the company might be celebrated for its enterprise in bringing fresh drinking water to the town, following its incorporation in 1830.
The oldest of all the water-supply reservoirs that served Sheffield is still in water. The Old Great Dam of 1785 is now the lake in Crookes Valley Park.
The Sheffield Waterworks Company first built Hadfield Reservoir west of Sheffield at Crookes in 1833. In response to inexorable continuing demand, three additional reservoirs opened at Redmires, far out of town, in 1836, 1849 and 1854.
The Redmires water was carried to Crookes by a conduit begun in 1836, running for 4½ miles mostly in the open, with a thirty-foot-high aqueduct (demolished after 1950) across the Tapton valley and a 1,200-foot tunnel, three feet in diameter, at the lower end.
Calvin Payne, whose explorations of Sheffield’s buried utilities are well-known through his “Drainspotting” walks, began to explore the conduit in 2023 and enlisted members of the Sheffield History forum.
Calvin has showed that it’s possible to explore much of the conduit’s line and has collaborated with Wobbly Runner, a highly skilled videographer, to reveal that this prodigious engineering undertaking for its date has largely survived, hidden in plain sight, for nearly two hundred years.
Video technology provides the tools to mix maps and aerial photographs, drone imagery and commentary in a permanent record that’s a valuable legacy for the future: Hidden in Plain Sight: The 19th-Century Water Channel That Still Crosses Sheffield’s Hills.
The South Yorkshire Local Heritage List description provides a succinct summary of the conduit’s history, together with images and a map showing the surviving lengths of its course: Sheffield Water Works Company conduit remains – Sheffield History Chat – Sheffield History – Sheffield Memories.
The conduit was used for water supply until 1909, and the Hadfield Reservoir was replaced by a covered reservoir on part of the site in 1950. The remainder of its area now provides facilities for the Sheffield Waterworks Sports Club.
Its visible presence is limited to the names nearby of Reservoir Road and Conduit Road.
It’s ironic that one of the most significant features of Sheffield’s infrastructure is largely unknown to local inhabitants and visitors. It deserves signposting, interpreting and commemorating, as part of the city’s heritage and a resource for people to explore and enjoy.