page_title: Haweswater Reservoir
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Haweswater Reservoir / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Manchester Corporation Water Works (MCWW) sign from 1930s, still in place in 2016, at the road end car park in Mardale.
context_page_description: Haweswater is a reservoir in the valley of Mardale, Cumbria in the Lake District, England. Work to raise the height of the original natural lake was started in 1929. It was controversially dammed after the UK Parliament passed a Private Act giving Manchester Corporation permission to build the reservoir to supply drinking water to the city. The decision caused a public outcry because the farming villages of Measand and Mardale Green would be flooded and the valley altered forever.
  The reservoir is now owned by United Utilities. It supplies about 25% of the North West's water supply.
context_section_description: Haweswater was originally a natural lake about 4 km (2.5 mi) long. A tongue of land at Measand divided the lake almost in two. The upper and lower reaches of the lake were known as High Water and Low Water.
  In 1929 work started to build the dam wall across the valley floor. At the time of construction, its design was considered to be at the forefront of civil engineering technology because it was the world's first hollow buttress dam. The wall would be created from 44 separate buttressed units joined by flexible joints. When the dam was completed by 1935, it measured 470 m (1,540 ft) long and 27.5 m (90 ft) high. It has a 1.4 m (4 ft 7 in) wide parapet that runs atop the length of the dam. Building supplies were brought to the site from the adjoining valleys of Heltondale and Swindale. When the valley was flooded, the dam raised the water level by 29 m (95 ft). This created a reservoir 6 km (3.7 mi) long and up to 600 m (2,000 ft) across at its widest point. It holds up to 84 billion litres (18×10⁹ imp gal) of water. 
  Before the valley was flooded in 1935, all the farms and dwellings of the villages of Mardale Green and Measand were demolished, as well as the centuries-old Dun Bull Inn at Mardale Green. The village church was dismantled and the stone used in constructing the dam; all the bodies in the churchyard were exhumed and re-buried at Shap.
  Today, when the water in the reservoir is low, the remains of the submerged village of Mardale Green can still be seen, including stone walls and the village bridge.
  Manchester Corporation built a new road along the eastern side of the lake to replace the flooded highway lower in the valley, and the Haweswater Hotel was constructed midway down the length of the reservoir as a replacement for the Dun Bull. The road continues to the western end of Haweswater, to a car park, a popular starting point for a path to the surrounding fells of Harter Fell, Branstree and High Street.
caption: 1930s Manchester Corporation Water Works (MCWW) footpath sign at the western end car park
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