From the current issue of Retrospect – the journal of the local history society: Newsletter of the Friends of King John’s Hunting Lodge – the Axbridge and District Museum Trust. With investigations going ahead rapidly for a proposed second Cheddar reservoir right on our doorstep, this is an appropriate time to look at the way the first project was tackled in the 1930s, using steam power and an army of 400 men. Axbridge’s own freelance journalist and editor Harry Mottram – mastermind behind the website Axbridge Review and a number of other publications – has contributed this fascinating article. The photos were sent to him some years ago by a relative of one of the original workmen on condition they are only used to illustrate the history of Cheddar Reservoir. Harry writes:
It was the year the National Grid was completed and the classic London Underground map designed by Harry Beck was first published – and the year Hitler came to power. This was 1933, when work began to build Cheddar Reservoir.
The ground is prepared for the first Cheddar Reservoir
The country was still recovering from the economic slump triggered by the Wall Street Crash of 1928, and the lasting effects of the First World War. Britain was entering the modern age of new council houses, BBC radio, jazz music, fast cars, air travel, and modern domestic appliances which needed gas, electricity and most of all, clean running water for washing and to flush lavatories for the expanding population. Hence the need for Cheddar Reservoir.
If the present plans by South West Water, owned by the Devon-based Pennon Group who bought Bristol Water in 2023, are approved as expected this year, it will become the largest infrastructure project in Somerset after Hinkley Point C, with a completion date of 2030 at a cost of at least £2.8 billion.
When the first reservoir was constructed, heavy plant and equipment was in its infancy, so manpower was vital. A railway link was built as a spur off the Cheddar Valley line to take material to the site, near where the yacht club is today. A steam-powered crane and shovel were employed to help with the work although it was pick and shovel that largely ruled the day.
Around 400 men, many from the Irish Free State who even brought with them their own priest, took on the task. Many were billeted locally in homes, pubs and boarding houses, while some lived in huts close to the site. Work began in April 1933, and it took five years of digging and lining the reservoir to complete, then around a year to fill before the outbreak of World War Two.
Cheddar had been a key part of the local supply grid for nearly 100 years thanks to the Mendip water cascading out from the bottom of the Gorge. In 1914 it was decided to take water from the River Yeo to increase supplies not only for the growing population in the Cheddar Valley but further afield. In early 1922, the dams and intake were built in the Gorge next to the now-demolished Cliff Hotel, with a pipeline laid to a pumping station in Lower New Road.
Eventually, though, a reservoir was needed to make better use of water from the springs. Geological work began, the present site was chosen and the cost was estimated at £450,000. McAlpine was the main contractor for the Bristol Waterworks Company, and work began. The company actually had wanted to build a much larger reservoir or a second one as well, but funds did not allow this.
Work was suspended from October 1935 to March 1936 because of incessant rain, and the reservoir was finally ready in 1938. A huge saucer-like depression was scooped out of the fields to the west of Holwell Lane, with the hedges and trees taken out, along with Barrow Wood Farm. The soil and stone removed was used in a huge embankment to contain the water, reaching as high as 50ft on the Wedmore side and lower on the north, keeping the circular path around the reservoir level.
A low wall rimmed the perimeter, with survey points every 25 yards or so marked by numbers 0 to116 – still visible today. The sides were lined with concrete slabs, with a base of clay. When the water level is low, this is exposed revealing how comparatively shallow the reservoir actually is, although on the south side it is more than 25 feet deep. It can hold 1,350 million gallons of raw river water pumped in from tower on the Cheddar side and a smaller inlet to the south, which is only rarely used to take water from the River Axe.
The reservoir is around two-and-a-quarter miles in circumference, and originally was out of bounds to all but employees of Bristol Water. Much of the clay for the lining was dug to the south of the reservoir and later became known as the Clay Pits, still used for fishing. Permission for today’s activities like angling, sailing and other water sports, plus access for people to walk, jog and cycle around edge, had to wait years.
During World War Two, in 1940, regular bombing raids by the Luftwaffe were taking place targeting Bristol, towns in Somerset, and Cardiff docks, and the German air crews used the reservoir to help their navigation as it was so prominent in the landscape. One night, a number of bombs were dropped across the area, with a number landing both at Compton Bishop and near where Wedmore Golf Club is now. Whether they were aimed at the reservoir we don’t know, but it was common for the Luftwaffe planes to jettison their bombs if they did not reach their target.
When building work finished, some small parts of machinery were left behind at the site and this took some time to be cleared away, along with the siding off the Cheddar Valley Railway. The accommodation huts came down and the workers packed up and left. The pubs and shops of Axbridge and Cheddar had seen a boost in trade, and some local women married the workers. One thing that didn’t happen then, though, was that second reservoir – World War Two put pay to that – and so some 88 or so years later we await news of Cheddar Reservoir Two and the start date for its construction.
See https://kingjohnshuntinglodge.co.uk/Newsletters_4731
Axbridge Review is edited by Harry Mottram and is published for the interest of himself and fellow residents.
Harry is a freelance journalist. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube etc
Email:harryfmottram@gmail.com
Website:www.harrymottram.co.uk
Pictures: These photos were sent to me by a relative of one of the main contractors when I published my own magazine The Strawberry Line Times – and ran articles on the building of the first reservoir. They are only for use to illustrate the history of Cheddar Reservoir.
This article is to be published in Retrospect – the local history society’s newsletter so make sure you join the society so as to get a copy. Visit https://kingjohnshuntinglodge.co.uk/contact_us
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