In the tangled woods behind the Vyrnwy Hotel, at the top of a steep and sometimes muddy slope, there is a neglected memorial. It is a stone obelisk on a double plinth and engraved on three sides are the forty-four names of men who died during the construction of the beautiful lake which lies peacefully below you.
Of course technically it isn’t a lake, it is a reservoir that was constructed between 1880 and 1890, but whatever you want to call it Vyrnwy is a wondrous place deep in the green Berwyn hills, beautiful as well as functional. It might be man-made but it looks entirely natural and entirely magnificent. Two steep and narrow roads apparently lead out of the valley at the far end over the mountains into Gwynedd but the iconic Straining Tower makes you feel that you have somehow been transported to Bavaria or central Europe.
It is when you look at the dam wall that you start to realise the colossal achievement that Lake Vyrnwy represents. The wall that retains those four miles of water is forty metres thick at the base; it is forty four metres high and over 350 metres wide. The roadway along the top is supported on thirty one arches. It is a vast amount of solid stone, seemingly immovable, retaining 59.7 million cubic metres of water and when the lake is full and the water pours over the top, it is the most spectacular of sights. This water re-joins the river Vyrnwy and heads off into Shropshire where it meets up with the Severn and then takes a long route south through Wales to the Bristol Channel.
Beneath Lake Vyrnwy is the original site of the village of Llanwddyn. It was described in 1852 as an ‘obscure but romantic and picturesque village’ with three inns, a post office, two chapels, thirty seven homes and ten farms. It was certainly wet. Indeed parts of the original valley were permanently flooded through the winter making them effectively unusable.
The great urban centres of England needed water both for industrial purposes and for the rapidly growing population. Liverpool discovered that a reservoir at Llanwddyn would collect water ‘sufficiently free from lime and other mineral matter to be soft enough for steam, washing and manufacturing uses’ with ‘just enough of these ingredients to render it palatable for drinking purposes.’
Test drillings then showed that there was a significant bed of rock running across the valley at exactly the right spot below Llanwddyn, strong enough to support the construction of a dam and so in 1880 Parliament passed The Liverpool Corporation Waterworks Act.
As far as some were concerned, Liverpool was doing Llanwddyn a favour. In fact, a Merseyside councillor described the village as ‘the most God-forsaken place in the world,’ which merely indicates that he must have wandered around Liverpool with his eyes closed.
The villagers were indeed well looked after by Liverpool Corporation and were quite pragmatic about the construction project – the incentives they received outweighed the pain of relocation, for they received good solid stone houses, still standing proudly today and much better than the ones they lost. They also ‘received compensation for the disturbance.’ Their village became a huge and complex construction site, with over a thousand labourers, a steam-driven tramway and cranes and they lived amongst it all as the great dam wall was constructed.
No dam had been built out of stone like this before and over half a million slate blocks were used. The stone was quarried on the eastern side of the valley and all other necessary materials were transported by horse and cart from the nearest station ten miles away at Llanfyllin, which meant that money had to be spent to improve the road. Part of the stables that were built to accommodate the horses is still visible in the town. At Llanwddyn a small, almost self-sufficient colony developed to service the construction.
Work began in 1881 and by 1889 the old village had been destroyed with dynamite and a hundred skulls and other remains from the cemetery were taken to the new church dedicated to St Wddyn which was consecrated the day before the reservoir began to fill. Within a year it was full and water was, as planned, flowing over the top of the dam. It was the largest artificial reservoir in Europe at the time. Until 1960 Llanwddyn was powered by electricity generated by water passing through valves into the river below.
Collecting the water wasn’t the only part of the job. It had to be transported and that journey still begins at the lake’s most famous landmark, the gothic-style Straining Tower which stands close to the shore and looks as if it has been lifted straight out of a fairy tale. It is a fantastic – and functional – folly. It removes debris before the daily dose of fifty-four million gallons sets out on its gravity-powered sixty-eight mile journey to Liverpool through forty-two inch pipes. The first water arrived in 1892, ‘brought to Liverpool in a perennial stream.’
Liverpool Corporation purchased land around the lake to maintain the purity of the water and this has become a haven for wildlife. Birds and game were released and the water was stocked with 40,000 trout from Loch Leven. Many people describe the lake as their favourite place in Wales and they come to drive, to walk, to ride, to enjoy the striking sculpture park. It is a place of accessible beauty.
Part of the project was the construction of a hotel in 1890 to promote the lake as a leisure destination. The hotel has spectacular views over the lake and the walls of the public rooms are lined with displays of confused-looking trout pulled by enthusiastic fishermen from the lake years ago, their achievements also noted in the detailed fishing diaries.
The area is now a nature reserve and a bird sanctuary. It is the home to six species of bat and numerous butterflies and dragonflies. The woodland which now surrounds the lake, planted in the years following construction, is the home of a Douglas Fir which in 2011, and with a height of 60 metres, was declared to be the tallest tree in Wales – after its neighbour, the previous owner of that prestigious title, was damaged and felled after a gale.
It is the perfect place for those who enjoy gentle scenic walks, though in October 1890 Edward Phillips from the Liverpool Corporation accepted a challenge ‘to walk four times round the celebrated Lake Vyrnwy (a distance of close on fifty miles) in 12 hours.’ The press reported that ‘the pedestrian, who is over fifty-years of age, completed his undertaking easily without showing signs of fatigue.’ His dog which accompanied him ‘was adorned with a medal for his faithfulness.’ These days they run a half marathon here and dogs are less welcome.
The details of those deaths that occurred during the construction remain unrecorded. The men who came to Llanwddyn were a vast, but expendable, army of working men for whom accidents, injuries and fatalities were merely a part of their way of life. Ten of those men were killed in site accidents. Thirty four others died during construction. There was drinking of course, arguments too and scuffles, one of which led to a fight outside a pub in July 1886 in which a man was hit on the head and died. But none of this was regarded as particularly notable. It was nothing more than life amongst the underclass, which worked so hard in a remote valley to provide pure water for Liverpool and then moved on.
Today Lake Vyrnwy is a Grade 1 Listed Building as ‘an outstanding achievement of Victorian water engineering.’ Whatever you think about the export of Welsh water, you will acknowledge that at Lake Vyrnwy it created something beautiful. Walter Scott wrote in The Lady of the Lake…So wondrous wild, the whole might seem, A scenery of a fairy dream.
That could be Vyrnwy. The neglected obelisk however reminds you that such beauty came at a price.
Words: Geoff Brookes
Feature image: Lake Vyrnwy, Powys, Sean Hattersley (Source – CC BY-SA 3.0)
