The fascinating tale of the water supply that never was is uncovered by our unrealised reservoir correspondent Angus Young.
Despite the signs marking the city boundary, Hull City Council still owns some parcels of land just across the border in the East Riding. The fields off Priory Road as you enter Cottingham and the former Hedon aerodrome site beyond Saltend are both owned by the council. But back in 1932 Hull’s landowning interests extended 50 miles away to the North York Moors.
The land in question was in the Upper Farndale valley, north of Kirkbymoorside, and covered nearly 5,000 acres. At the time it was acquired by Hull Corporation – the forerunner to today’s city council – as part of an ambitious plan to build a huge reservoir to create a reliable supply of fresh water to the city’s industrial sector as well as its expanding population via a very long pipeline.
As well as meeting the obvious demand, there was an element of science behind the idea. The proposal envisaged mixing the soft water of the Moors with the hard water extracted closer to Hull to produce water with less minerals in it. One of the potential benefits promoted at the time was that softer water would make soap lather more easily.
Another was job creation. Corporation officials estimated the construction of the reservoir and a series of weirs and aqueducts would provide enough work for up to 600 unemployed labourers from the city. A third advantage – as promoted by Hull – was the avoidance of any sizeable village or settlement being “drowned” by the scheme. Instead, the relatively remote nature of the land with its scattered farmsteads meant a reservoir would not swamp a significant population. Overall, around 100 people lived there.
Existing farmers in the area became tenants of the Corporation as it secured the necessary parliamentary approval and started drawing up designs for a 1,900ft-long dam standing 130ft high, capable of holding back six thousand million gallons of water in a two and a half mile-long lake. However, the Corporation still needed to fund the estimated £2.1m cost and the start of the Second World War then effectively put things on hold.
When the conflict ended in 1945 Hull applied for extensions to previous permissions, including borrowing powers, to keep the idea alive.
In 1954 the city gave approval for a planned nature reserve on some of the land, partly as a response to problems being caused by people picking wild daffodils in large numbers. However, the council reserved the right to terminate the agreement with six months’ notice.
By 1970 the North York Moors was an established National Park while public opinion was turning against the idea of creating a reservoir in the middle of it.
Then a new parliamentary bill seeking to confirm an updated reservoir scheme costing £8m and incorporating modern technology as an integral part of future water supply planning in Yorkshire controversially collapsed when an all-party select committee voted against it. The committee chairman Sir Samuel Knox-Cunningham used this casting vote to veto the scheme, having previously ruled that several committee members were ineligible to vote having previously publicly expressed support for it. At a stroke, 38 years of reservoir planning by successive Hull council officials had come to an abrupt end.
Hull eventually transferred the land to the Yorkshire Water Authority when it was created in 1974. Later, following the privatisation of the water industry, the 26 tenants in Farndale were allowed to buy their farms from the new-look company Yorkshire Water.