Bartley Reservoir

Bartley Reservoir is a reservoir for drinking water in Birmingham, England. It covers 460,000 square metres (5,000,000 sq ft).

Bartley Reservoir
with Birmingham city centre skyline in the background
LocationBirmingham
Coordinates52.42788°N 1.99554°W / 52.42788; -1.99554
Typedrinking water reservoir
Primary inflowsElan aqueduct
Primary outflowsFrankley Water Treatment Works
Managing agencySevern Trent Water
Built1930
Max. length1.05 kilometres (0.65 mi)
Max. width450 metres (1,480 ft)
Surface area0.46 square kilometres (110 acres)
Average depth5.1 metres (17 ft)
Water volume2.4 million cubic metres (530×10^6 imp gal)
Shore length13 km (1.9 miles)
1 Shore length is not a well-defined measure.

The reservoir is about 1.05 kilometres (0.65 mi) long, over 450 metres (1,480 ft) wide, and about 18 metres (60 ft) deep at the dam. Its surface area is 0.45 square kilometres (0.17 sq mi).

It is known as the place where Bill Oddie did much of his early birdwatching, and features in his books (notably Bill Oddie's Gone Birding) and television programmes. His first ever published article, for the West Midland Bird Club's annual report, was about the birds of the reservoir.[1] The reservoir is also home to Bartley Sailing Club.[2]

History

Most of the land occupied by Bartley Reservoir was in the parish of Northfield, originally in Worcestershire. It was transferred to Warwickshire when Northfield became part of Birmingham in November 1911, and thus became part of the West Midlands county on the latter's creation in 1974.

However, the south-west end of the reservoir overlapped into the parish of Frankley, in Worcestershire (Hereford and Worcester, from 1974).[3] In April 1995 part of Frankley (including the south-west part of Bartley Reservoir) was transferred to Birmingham and thus joined the rest of the reservoir in the West Midlands county.

Shortly after the completion of the Elan Valley Reservoirs in the early 1920s, it became apparent that more storage capacity would be required to maintain the daily supplies needed by Birmingham. The reservoir is close to the terminus of the Elan aqueduct and adjacent to Frankley Reservoir.

The contract for the construction of the reservoir was let by Birmingham Corporation Water Department in February 1925 to Edmund Nuttall, Sons and Co. Ltd., of Manchester, and the Francois Cementation Company undertook all cementation. It was completed in 1930.

The reservoir featured in a television programme in 1985, when Bill Oddie was interviewed there by Julian Pettifer for a 50-minute Nature Watch Special: Bill Oddie - Bird Watcher.[4][5]

gollark: How does it make hydrogen atoms? I didn't think you had that technology.
gollark: Just blatantly lie all the time about code guessing. It's entirely ethical.
gollark: It is generally not good strategy to actually provide information about your code.
gollark: Well, see, you could be bluffing about that too.
gollark: Are you bluffing? Deploying inductive bee systems...

See also

References
  1. Oddie, W.E. (July 1963). "Birds in the Bartley Reservoir Area, 1931-1962 (Part I)". The West Midland Bird Report, 1962. Birmingham: West Midland Bird Club. 29. Archived from the original on 14 May 2011. Retrieved 13 February 2010.CS1 maint: unfit url (link)
  2. http://bartleysc.co.uk
  3. Ordnance Survey Landranger Sheet 139, 1982 edition
  4. Lawson, Mark (30 July 1985). "Choice (Today's Television Programmes)". The Times. UK. p. 29. Retrieved 12 November 2008.
  5. "Nature Watch Special: Bill Oddie - Bird Watcher". 30 July 1985. ITV Central. Missing or empty |series= (help)
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.