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Bottoms Reservoir

Looking west, across Bottoms Reservoir, from the Valehouse Dam.

Bottoms Reservoir is one of the Longdendale Reservoirs (Link Longdendale Chain, Wikipedia) which extend for 6 miles eastwards; it is the closest to Hadfield and Tintwistle. When this immense 29-year civil engineering project was completed in 1877 the chain of reservoirs formed the largest body of man-made water in the world, and was Europe’s first major conservation scheme.

Manchester Corporation commissioned Bottoms and the other reservoirs in the mid-19th century to provide drinking water for its rapidly increasing population. Four Acts of Parliament were needed for the entire scheme. The reservoir, named after Bottoms Mill which stood here before the valley was flooded, was the last of the reservoirs to be constructed; it was completed in 1877.

Bottoms Reservoir and Valehouse Reservoir are ‘compensation reservoirs’ to maintain the downstream flow of the River Etherow. When the Longdendale Valley was dammed in the mid-19th century, owners of cotton mills downstream strongly opposed the plans to flood the valley as it would have starved them of water critical to their businesses and so demanded that Manchester Corporation “compensate” them for their loss.

Summarised from an information board at the site.