Chapter 5 All play and no fun: waterworks and the pursuit of leisure

The development of leisure

Areas of the countryside had long been associated with leisure pursuits, predominantly for the upper classes. The main leisure activity undertaken in these rural areas was, historically, shooting. Hunting rights were apportioned to areas such as the Forest of Knaresborough in North Yorkshire or the New Forest in Hampshire, where hunting was permitted with permission from the Crown. It is unsurprising, then, that the hunting of game, particularly grouse, developed and became a carefully managed pastime of the rural gentry. Grouse shooting was not consigned to one area of the country, as a variety of landed estates was utilised for upper-class recreation. The development of the sport in rural areas such as the Washburn Valley or Lake Vyrnwy had much to do with wider changes to rural social life; the Enclosure Acts, the undercutting of British agriculture with foreign imports, and the development of the railways were just a few factors in the weakening of rural economic and social life in Britain during the nineteenth century. As rural populations and communal rights declined, the upper classes were well placed to cultivate areas of the countryside for the pursuit of game. Country estates started to engage in landscape management, not only in cultivating heather for grouse to feed off and live among, but in building shooting lodges and butts across the uplands.⁶

The social and economic upheaval that affected the development of shooting was further exacerbated by the construction of waterworks schemes. Waterworks schemes across the country greatly affected the sanctity of long-held sporting rights, as municipal government and private water authorities began to dictate how small pockets of the countryside should be used for leisure. Sporting rights often featured as a part of negotiations with local landowners when authorities tried to gain parliamentary approval for waterworks schemes: F. H. Fawkes negotiated the sole sporting rights around Lindley Wood reservoir in the Washburn Valley as part of his settlement with Leeds Corporation in 1867 that allowed the passing of the Leeds Waterworks Act of that year.⁷ The ownership of sporting rights on municipally owned land became entwined in the rent of certain properties, such as Swinsty Hall in the Washburn Valley. The rental of other, smaller properties in the valley provided the opportunity for members of the middle class to participate in shooting.⁸ The provision of these shooting rights, and the subsequent engagement of members of middle classes, contributed to a trend of middle-class participation that became increasingly common across the country prior to the First World War.⁹ The lease for the newly constructed Vyrnwy Hotel in 1890 came with fishing and shooting rights, thereby doubling the appeal of the area to those interested in leisure.¹⁰ While shooting had previously been the preserve of the upper classes, the gaining of sporting rights through land purchases provided water authorities with the opportunity to offer access to those aspiring to an upper-class lifestyle.

The Yorkshire Post regularly provided readers with updates on how the sport fared during the shooting season from across the country, reflecting the newspaper’s desire to be read nationally. Areas covered by their regular round-ups included prominent sporting areas of Yorkshire such as Bolton Abbey and the South Yorkshire uplands, as well as the Peak District, Derbyshire, Cumberland, Cleveland and Northumberland, Lancashire, and areas of Scotland and North Wales.¹¹ As such, grouse shooting was undoubtedly popular in areas of the country targeted for municipal gathering grounds. The otherwise little-known Washburn Valley was propelled into the spotlight in 1888 after Lord Walsingham, the owner of Blubberhouses Hall, set out to challenge talk about the poor quality of his shooting stock. He embarked on twenty drives, purportedly shooting a record 1,070 birds in one day.¹² This largesse, though, was a large factor in the decline of the sport among the upper classes. While great prestige could be bestowed, it was an expensive pursuit that brought little to no income for landowners. Walsingham is a case in point: driven to bankruptcy by his love of shooting, he sold Blubberhouses Hall to Leeds Corporation in 1901 as part of the authority’s programme of compulsory purchases, as well as his London mansion, now the Ritz hotel.¹³ Links between these waterscapes and leisure, then, predated the coming of the reservoirs; however, reservoirs accelerated the development of activities in rural areas.

Angling

Bodies of water owned by water authorities presented a commercial leisure opportunity: angling. It is a contradiction of sorts that angling was, at one time, one of the most popular sports in Britain, and yet has received relatively little attention from historians.¹⁴ One reason for this may be the relative lack of sources around fishing. It is difficult to provide national or local participation figures; however, it is possible to gain an insight into the number of people, mainly men, who participated in the sport. During the nineteenth century, anglers across the country were increasingly taking advantage of rural and urban rivers, canals and lakes. For example, in 1900 one and half thousand members of Birmingham Anglers Association, the largest angling club in the world in the early twentieth century, travelled to Abingdon, Oxfordshire to fish in the Thames.¹⁵ Participation in Leeds was similarly high: the Leeds and District Amalgamated Society of Anglers claimed in 1902 that the society had two thousand members from Leeds.¹⁶ Most fishing activity initially took place on rivers, which had been used for sport from the early modern period.¹⁷ The impact of industrialisation on rivers, though, gave rise to concerns about the state of fishing stocks, leading to a level of state intervention with the 1865 Salmon Fishery Act.¹⁸ Angling was often framed as an escape from the industrial town to engage with and enjoy the picturesque.¹⁹ The construction of reservoirs, whose waters would be protected from pollution, therefore provided an opportunity for anglers and water authorities alike. Access to the reservoirs to fish, though, was not a straightforward decision as leisure became intertwined with the management of urban water supply and the civic project.

Despite the opportunity that reservoirs presented to municipal authorities and urban, predominantly middle-class, leisure seekers, fishing was often not permitted in the first instance. In some cases, this was because of pre-existing sporting rights that corporations had established or agreed to honour when trying to defeat opposition to waterworks bills in Parliament. In the case of Leeds’s Washburn Valley reservoirs, the sporting rights to Lindley Wood reservoir had been secured by the local landowner F. H. Fawkes, which prohibited any use by members of the public. In the case of Liverpool’s Rivington reservoir, land was purchased in the area by Liverpool Corporation in 1895 to facilitate fishing, some thirty-eight years after construction had been completed.²⁰ For some reservoirs that predated the great expansion of reservoir construction from the 1860s onwards, such as Manchester’s Gorton reservoir, built in the 1820s, fishing provision was only granted in the late nineteenth century.²¹

A similar process took place in the Washburn Valley. However, the initial proposal came not from a fishing association or municipal authority, but from a resident of the valley. In 1879, Thomas Priestly, the master of Board School at Norwood, asked the Leeds waterworks committee for permission to fish in Swinsty and Fewston reservoirs. The committee agreed to this request, although fishing would only be permitted by ticket. The committee also forbade boating on the reservoirs, an attitude that persisted into the twentieth century.²² While this position, also adopted at Thirlmere, may have been to prevent pollution, it was not an approach adopted universally, with boating offered at Lake Vyrnwy and in the Elan Valley.²³ The decision-making process around fishing, seen as an afterthought in the first instance, shows that the recreational use of reservoirs was not necessarily included in the plans of authorities or engineers. Although the impact to the health of fish was a part of the Thirlmere Defence Association’s parliamentary battle against the Manchester Corporation, as well as the subsequent transportation of char to Thirlmere in 1879 and 1886, angling did not become a major use of the reservoir, which remained off limits to anglers despite the corporation holding the sporting rights.²⁴ This is perhaps due to the uniqueness of Thirlmere, inaccessible to many until the coming of the motor car, while questions were posed over the ability of fish to thrive in the reservoir.²⁵ Fishing in reservoirs, then, was often an afterthought, but an afterthought that was of enormous benefit to authorities in terms of providing leisure avenues for urban residents and in terms of managing the quality of the water supply. One reservoir in which this was not the case was Caban Coch Reservoir, the third reservoir of the Elan Valley scheme, which was planned to be stocked with fish as construction was still underway.²⁶ Finished in the first years of the twentieth century, this decision was, no doubt, linked to the success of angling in Craig Goch and Pen y Garreg reservoirs, as well as other municipal reservoirs in Wales like Lake Vyrnwy.

Levels of participation are hard to gauge, given that municipalities rarely if ever recorded and published the number of anglers that visited waterworks, despite the use of tickets at many sites. The feats of anglers, though, were publicised in local newspapers and specialist journals like the Fishing Gazette and The Field, which provide an insight into how popular these sites were for fishing. Angling at Lake Vyrnwy began in 1891 and was immediately popular, with 4,143 fish caught that year.²⁸ The city that took the most pride in the success of angling in their reservoirs was Birmingham. Between 1905 and 1913, Birmingham Corporation published figures, widely circulated by local newspapers, detailing the fish caught in the Elan Valley reservoirs and their cumulative weight. As seen in Table 5.1, the figures undulate, peaking at over six thousand fish caught in 1908. This undulation can be linked to a series of factors, most notably climate and weather. When compared to Lake Vyrnwy, the Elan Valley reservoirs were marginally more popular; over the same period covered in Table 5.1, an annual average of 4,502 fish were caught in the Elan reservoirs compared with an average of 3,382 at Vyrnwy.²⁹ In some ways it is not surprising that Birmingham Corporation published these figures, or that they were more popular with anglers than other municipal reservoirs, given the prevalence of the civic gospel that had created links between the city and its utilities.³⁰ The Elan Valley may have been seventy-three miles away from the city, but it was clearly a source of pride to highlight so widely the popularity of fishing in Birmingham’s grand reservoirs.

Liverpool Corporation took the somewhat unique step of constructing a municipal hotel on the banks of Lake Vyrnwy. The proposition was contentious when first suggested in 1888, seen by some as more expense off the back of a scheme that had become embroiled in controversy with the main engineer Thomas Hawksley. Editorials in the Liverpool Echo denounced the proposal as little more than a hotel for councilmen to retire to, an ‘aldermanic booze den’.³¹ These concerns were heightened in 1890 when it was announced that the hotel would cost over double the initial projection of £5,000, with work needed to make the building habitable for its first tenant.³² While controversial, the hotel offered additional opportunities for leisure seekers. It not only provided the means for urban residents to extend their stay many miles from Liverpool or other towns and cities, but it cemented a further civic link between the city and its premiere watershed. This was evident in an advert from 1933 that claimed the hotel offered the opportunity for an ideal fishing holiday, ‘the most productive Hotel fishing in Wales for consistent and abundant sport’. The advert claimed the hotel offered ‘country house comfort’, with tennis, golf and shooting all available to take advantage of in the surrounding area.³³ Despite the expansion of working-class leisure during the interwar period, the advert clearly targeted middle-class leisure seekers, while taking a subtle dig at other municipal leisure provision, principally Birmingham’s Elan reservoirs. Initially built to house dignitaries and councilmen, the expansion of leisure meant that the hotel and fishing became entwined with the management of the Vyrnwy watershed and provided a further civic link to Liverpool.

The types of fish stocked by water authorities was also an important factor. The principal fish used for angling in reservoirs across England and Wales was brown trout, the primary fish along with salmon sought after by game anglers, who were mainly drawn from the upper and middle classes.³⁴ There were some variations, particularly in the Washburn Valley, which was provided with an order of golden tench in 1880 by the local landowner Lord Walsingham.³⁵ In order to help increase the number of fish in their reservoirs and, therefore, the quality of the sport, the Birmingham waterworks committee took the decision in 1913 to build small fish hatcheries at each of the Elan Valley lakes, contributing an extra twenty thousand brown trout ova that had been obtained from a fishery in Dumfries.³⁶ Care was taken to provide good quality fishing once authorities embraced fishing in the reservoirs, again suggesting that water authorities were taking the pursuit seriously.

Fully embracing angling in municipal reservoirs, though, was not a straightforward process, particularly in Leeds, which points to the wider difficulties that councillors had in managing watersheds. In 1896, a story in the local newspapers was brought to the attention of the Leeds waterworks committee, centring on a speech made by George Hodges, the vice president of the Leeds and District Amalgamated Society of Anglers, who argued that several corporations in the country had allowed angling societies to control fish stocks in reservoirs in order to improve the purity of the water supply. This was a concession that they had been seeking from the Leeds Corporation without success, an assertion that came as a surprise to members of the committee. Despite this, they sought to gain information on the feasibility of allowing angling societies to stock the reservoirs.³⁷ A month later, it was reported that the town clerk had corresponded with the town clerks of Manchester, Huddersfield and Hull Corporations, informing the committee that it was not the practice of those towns and cities to allow angling societies to manage fishing in their reservoirs, information that contradicted that provided by Hodges. It was resolved that the waterworks committee would not transfer the fishing and stocking rights of the reservoirs to any society, but would continue to grant the usual facilities for fishing.³⁸

One benefit for anglers in Leeds was the price of admission, or lack thereof, as the waterworks committee decided to provide free fishing permits for ratepayers. The cost of renting good fishing water rose greatly during the nineteenth century, so the provision of free fishing to the ratepayers of Leeds was a boon.³⁹ This was not the case with other reservoirs. An advert for Vyrnwy Hotel from 1895 offered fishing day tickets for two shillings and sixpence, and week tickets for twelve shillings and sixpence. Fishing was offered in the Elan Valley at the slightly more favourable weekly rate of ten shillings and sixpence, a rate that nevertheless priced out the ‘respectable workingman’.⁴⁰ The various ways in which fishing was priced, be it free access for ratepayers in Leeds or charged elsewhere, in conjunction with the stocking of trout, marked the reservoirs out as the province of the middle-class angler. This demarcation was further heightened by the accessibility of places like the Washburn Valley or Lake Vyrnwy that lay several miles away from the city. The Washburn Valley was an isolated area with no railway to link it to nearby urban centres, while Lake Vyrnwy and the Elan Valley were accessible by train but still tucked in the heart of the Welsh countryside. Accessibility for the working class was, therefore, restricted.

Despite seemingly putting the case to bed in 1896, questions over the management of fishing in the Leeds reservoirs continued to rumble, with some asking whether it was a good idea to stock fish in the water supply at all. The question of allowing the Leeds and District Amalgamated Society of Anglers to stock the reservoirs was once again raised in July 1902. The honorary secretary of the society, J. N. Green, presented an offer, initially to the waterworks committee, to pay twenty-five pounds per year for the sole right to fish in Swinsty and Fewston reservoirs. The society planned to charge its members and the ratepayers of Leeds sixpence a day, and others two shillings and sixpence, with the profits used to restock the reservoirs. This deal had formally been agreed to by the waterworks committee; however, by August the resolution had been rescinded, and in September Councillor Nichols, as chairman of the waterworks committee, forwarded a motion to the full corporation to rescind the offer, a motion that Nichols himself disagreed with.⁴¹

Nichols’s issues stemmed mainly from the issue of trespassing; he reported that in the previous month four hundred people had fished without permission, ‘and when accused had not only used abusive language but threatened to throw the officials into the reservoir’.⁴² This incident was not the behaviour of the respectable middle classes, suggesting that working-class anglers were present in the valley. As Jeff Hill has noted, the majority of those who participated in leisure activities, regardless of class or gender, did not conform to this type of behaviour, yet the actions of the minority acting in unrespectable ways were highlighted above others.⁴³ It also stressed fears of delinquency that had become heightened during the late nineteenth century as the effects of urbanisation, increase in leisure and perceived imperial decline created social panic, an issue also present in depictions of working-class ramblers in the twentieth century.⁴⁴ By transferring powers to the Leeds and District Amalgamated Society of Anglers, they would charge the residents of Leeds a nominal cost, and employees of the corporation would not have to deal with the more violent instances of trespassing cited; they would, however, be ceding the management of the landscape to the society. Nichols also noted that fishing rights had been leased to angling societies in Sheffield, Bradford, Wakefield, Halifax and Huddersfield, which established a local precedent. The society argued that it had successfully managed the Roundhay Park fishery and, containing nearly two thousand members from Leeds, it was in their members’ best interests to help maintain the purity of the water supply with fish. This assertion was called into question by Dr Arthur Hawkyard, a family physician and Liberal councillor, who argued that pollution could be caused by dead fish and excrement, and therefore called for fishing in the reservoirs to cease entirely.⁴⁵

Despite the contradictory information received by the waterworks committee, similar discussions were happening in other towns and cities regarding the use of their reservoirs for fishing. A meeting of Liverpool Corporation in 1889 discussed a proposal to stock Lake Vyrnwy with trout fry, primarily in order to protect the purity of the water. In response to objections over the cost of the proposal, Councillor J. B. Smith responded that if fish were not present in the water to consume vegetable matter the water would be unwholesome, ‘they had spent two millions on the scheme, and it would be rendered useless unless they spent £150 on this object’.⁴⁶ This is a slight exaggeration, but it shows that there was clearly a developing ecological dimension to the debate around fishing, something that would extend beyond the council chamber.

The motion of the Leeds waterworks committee to reject the society’s offer was passed; however, the discussion that had taken place within the corporation reflected a tension between embracing the economic benefits of leisure, the role of the civic authority in protecting the waters of the reservoir, and unrespectable behaviour, concerns that would emerge again during the interwar period with regards to working-class ramblers. The deliberations of the corporation prompted debate from correspondents to the Yorkshire Post, all of whom took issue with the suggestion that fishing in the reservoirs should cease. The first correspondent, E. G. Arnold, claimed that he had fished in the reservoirs for twenty years and had seen little evidence of poaching or trespassing, pointedly remarking ‘to-day, I think, there is no fisherman in the Council’.⁴⁷ As to the suggestion that the fish may be deleterious to the quality of the water supply, he argued that fish ate insects and other aquatic life and therefore had a cleansing effect. He also pointed out that it would be difficult, without engineering work, to stop fish from entering the reservoirs, as both Fewston and Swinsty reservoirs had natural inlets. To ban fishing in the reservoirs, therefore, would result in an overabundance of fish in the water supply.⁴⁸ This sentiment was echoed by W. Richardson, who argued that: ‘It is a matter of common knowledge among the owners of fisheries that unless a reasonable amount of fair fishing be permitted, the number of fish increase more rapidly than the food supply’.⁴⁹

H. Knight Horsfield argued that, in light of the increasing monopolisation of fishing sites by angling societies, the Washburn Valley reservoirs provided an opportunity for ratepayers to fish free of charge, highlighting a civic benefit that the corporation was looking to take away for seemingly frivolous reasons: ‘The matter of pollution would be more serious if it were true that trout pollute the water; but precisely the opposite is known to be the fact’.⁵⁰ This point was reiterated by Edmund Barker, a member of the River Coquet Salmon Fisheries Conservancy Board, who noted that not only did trout eat frog spawn, tadpoles and other microscopic organisms, but the presence of trout thriving in water was a positive sign of purity.⁵¹ A further correspondent, W. C. Dawson, who had been a member of the Yorkshire Fishery Board, argued that while the corporation was wrong to question the positive effect of trout on water purity, the trout that he had previously fished in the reservoirs had been of poor stock, and he had given up ‘in disgust’. He pointed to the work done by Liverpool Corporation at Lake Vyrnwy as a positive example for the Leeds Corporation to follow:

Eleven years ago Lake Vyrnwy was practically virgin water. It was then stocked with fish suitable to the place under the direction of an expert pisciculturalist, and is to-day a sporting and a prosperous fishery, and a valuable asset to the Liverpool City Council.⁵²

He concluded by arguing that to neglect fishing, as was being proposed, ‘would be both from a utilitarian and sporting point of view a very great mistake’.⁵³ All the letters concluded that fishing was not just a leisure pursuit, but helped to fulfil civic duty in maintaining an ecological balance in the water supply. Additionally, the link between fishing in the reservoirs and civic identity was underscored, particularly in pointing to other municipalities such as Liverpool, which had succeeded in offering good quality sport in its reservoirs.

Ultimately, control over fishing remained with the waterworks committee, and angling continued to be enjoyed in Fewston and Swinsty reservoirs. Although the corporation decided to embrace the economic and civic benefits of angling in the reservoirs, the Leeds and District anglers continued to play a role in the governance of fishing. In 1917 they successfully pressured the waterworks committee to reinstate fishing in Fewston reservoir after suspension due to the First World War.⁵⁴ However, the debate over the positives and negatives of fishing in the reservoirs highlights both the potential benefits that fishing brought to Leeds’s water supply and the battle that had to be fought inside and outside the corporation for access to angling, battles that did not have to be fought in other towns and cities. In examining the use of reservoirs for fishing, it is clear that the sport was popular in municipal reservoirs, particularly when considering that there were many rivers and fisheries that could have been visited instead. A seemingly frivolous pastime, it helped to create a further link between the reservoirs and the city, as seen in the level of discourse in the Yorkshire Post defending the presence of fish in the reservoirs. As such, fishing in municipal reservoirs became an expression of civic pride. An important element of this link was the free access for the ratepayers of Leeds that helped to link this particular leisure activity with civic identity, as did the attention to good quality stock in reservoirs of Birmingham and Liverpool. The reservoirs did not solely supply water but also healthy recreation to urban residents, and, as seen in the correspondences above in Leeds, responsible management of the natural fish stock helped to manage the city’s water supply. This free access continued in Leeds into the post-war period, described by one correspondent as ‘a rare privilege’, further cementing utility and pleasure, although complaints around the stock of some reservoirs also continued.⁵⁵

However, the debate over access to reservoirs to fish was revisited on several occasions, and the reporting of unrespectable behaviour reveals an unease with the widening of access to the working classes. There is also little, if any, evidence to suggest that women participated in angling in the reservoirs examined here. Although female anglers increased in number and visibility during the early years of the twentieth century, many of the women’s groups reported in local newspapers took to sea fishing. Additionally, in a move that somewhat mirrored developments in women’s football, women were banned from participating in matches of the National Angling Clubs’ Association in 1934.⁵⁶ The link between fishing and civic pride, then, was as exclusionary in gender terms as it was in class terms. Those that took advantage of municipal angling were overwhelmingly middle-class, due to factors such as distance and lack of transport to these areas, and male. Additionally, concerns were raised about unrespectable behaviour, which sought to frame angling as a pursuit of the middle-class leisure seeker. Corporations were able to utilise their waterworks to great effect, creating a link between the activity and the civic project. However, this link was felt by some more than others.

Rambling

While fishing was undoubtedly popular, particularly among the middle classes, it did not become a mainstream activity in the way that walking has. In 2018, the Lake District alone received 19.38 million tourists, emphasising the continued popularity of walking that owes much to the battles fought in the early twentieth century over access to the countryside.⁵⁷ The most famous battle was that fought in the Peak District, which culminated in the mass trespass of Kinder Scout in 1932. Battles for access with local landowners were fought all over the country, particularly in water catchment areas. Although historians such as Jeremy Burchardt have pointed to conflict between walking groups and water authorities, there has been no in-depth examination of these issues. This section unravels the growth of rambling around reservoirs and waterworks, the issues that arose due to this growth, and the class tensions that continued to be expressed as these areas of the countryside were slowly made more available for urban leisure seekers.

Rambling as a leisure activity became increasingly common during the late nineteenth century as a pursuit of the middle classes, reflected in travel literature that sought to construct areas of natural beauty as enrichening places to visit, before becoming popular with working-class ramblers into the twentieth century.⁵⁸ Burchardt has pointed to three reasons for the uptake in rambling among the middle classes: the influence of the Romantic movement, urbanisation, and a rising interest in the natural sciences.⁵⁹ The previous chapter highlighted the influence of the Romantic movement on depictions of waterworks, and an interest in the natural sciences is evident in several of the rambling accounts published by the local newspapers. This was often expressed by showing an appreciation for the various plants and wildlife encountered by correspondents. One writer on a winter ramble in the Washburn Valley in 1893 noted:

True, Nature may be dead, but she is magnificently embalmed […] Look yonder in that clump of trees. What can be more beautiful than the reddish hue of the Scottish fir mingled in delicate harmony with the silvery birch? See where the ivy has hung itself in graceful festoons upon the bared limbs of the gnarled oak.⁶⁰

Although Burchardt has argued that this interest in the natural sciences diminished among ramblers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with the development of professional science and the decline of the Romantic movement, there remained an amateur scientific interest in these rural areas.⁶¹ One correspondent, writing in 1905, commented on the botanical range that the Washburn Valley offered throughout the year: ‘whether in spring under the spell of the wood anemone and the nodding daffodil, or later […] when the autumn flames in the tree tops or winter robes the land in chastest white, it is a thing of beauty’.⁶² On a ramble to Lake Vyrnwy in 1895, a correspondent of the Coventry Herald remarked on the ‘soft green pastures alternating with oak and larch woods, varied here and there by silver birch trees’.⁶³ While there was an element of romantic place-making to these descriptions, the identification of various trees implies an interest in botany and silviculture in their readers. Though these areas offered aesthetic beauties, ramblers were also encouraged by newspaper correspondents to enjoy their walks on a more scientific level.

Waterworks that lay in relative isolation made them prime destinations for ramblers, who would sometimes look to walk in excess of twenty miles from their designated starting point. Even though rambling did not become a mass activity until the twentieth century, it is clear from a report in the Wharfedale and Airedale Observer that the Washburn Valley was popular with day trippers as early as 1894, with visitors travelling on foot or by bicycle, carriage or wagonette.⁶⁴ While many ramblers in the twentieth century would travel by bus or car to Lawnswood, north of Headingley, and ramble some ten miles from there, train stations at Pool-in-Wharfedale and Otley provided a closer starting point, albeit still requiring a walk of several miles to reach the valley. Changes in transport also helped to reach waterworks in more remote areas of the country. The opening of Bala Junction railway station in 1882 provided access to areas of Wales, including Lake Vyrnwy, which lay roughly nine miles from the station, while the Elan Valley was accessible by coach or rail.⁶⁵ Further into the twentieth century, companies such as Midland Red offered day trips from cities like Birmingham to the Elan Valley and Lake Vyrnwy.⁶⁶ The Washburn Valley was well placed for ramblers coming from Leeds; however, changes in transportation made waterworks in more remote areas of the country more accessible as well.

Although some rural areas utilised for waterworks were celebrated by walkers, rambling was discouraged in others. A case in point was Thirlmere, lying at the heart of the Lake District. This was an area that had grown in popularity with visitors following the effusive descriptions of Romantic poets like Wordsworth, as well as the development of the Furness railway. Like fishing, rambling remained at the bottom of the list of priorities of the Manchester Corporation, despite notions during the parliamentary battle that pedestrian access to the surrounding areas would be guaranteed. After the construction of the reservoir, signs prohibiting access were placed around the area, although ramblers could walk along the western edge to the top of Helvellyn.⁶⁷ This was reflected in how Thirlmere was discussed in guidebooks of the Lake District, which sought to extol its engineering rather than aesthetic qualities.⁶⁸ While Thirlmere was an impressive example of engineering prowess, guidebook writers did not write about it in a way that would entice walkers and ramblers to visit, no doubt to the pleasure of members of the Manchester Corporation.

It was not until the twentieth century that the working classes, aided by the establishment of rambling clubs as well as better and cheaper transport links, began to traverse the countryside for leisure. Rambling became particularly popular as a working-class activity during the interwar period, as mass unemployment and low transport fares provided time for and accessibility to the countryside.⁶⁹ Additionally, rambling became, to some, a political act. This was a way of challenging a lack of access to the countryside in the face of upper-class land ownership, which culminated in the mass trespass of Kinder Scout, Derbyshire in 1932.⁷⁰ For many, though, rambling presented an opportunity for rational recreation, to leave the industrial city and enjoy the bucolic countryside. Newspaper articles during the summer months or public holidays commented on large crowds of people in Otley, West Yorkshire, en route to the Washburn Valley. One article in the Leeds Mercury on Good Friday, 1929, commented:

At Otley, the traffic was heavier than last year, and a feature of the invasion was the number of trampers who passed through the town. Clad in flannels, with shirts open at the neck, they penetrated to all parts of Wharfedale, a large number of them bent on exploring the natural delights of the Washburn Valley.⁷¹

This popularity was further outlined by the listing of rambling events by local newspapers during the 1920s and 1930s, many of which were undertaken by voluntary organisations that increasingly participated in outdoor recreation after the First World War.⁷² To take Leeds as an example, rambles were organised to the Washburn Valley by Leeds Rambling Club, Leeds All-Weather Rambling Club, Leeds Co-operative Holiday Association (CHA), Leeds Ruc-Sac Club, Leeds College of Commerce, Leeds and District Health and Strength Rambling Club, and Headingley Road Club.⁷³ Importantly, the valley was not just popular with rambling clubs from Leeds, with members of Huddersfield Rucksack Club rambling from Bradford. The area was also popular with Pudsey and District Rambling Club, Huddersfield Healthy Life Ramblers’ Club, and Seacroft and Cross Gates Cycling Club, who organised a ramble to the valley in order to promote their cycling cause.⁷⁴

It is not necessarily surprising that most of the clubs that visited the Washburn Valley were from the surrounding area, given the relative obscurity of the valley outside the region. Sites of more notable waterworks such as Vyrnwy and Elan attracted walkers from further afield. Cyclists from Todmorden and Tamworth visited Lake Vyrnwy in 1931 and 1935 respectively, while the Chester CHA and Holiday Fellowship Rambling Club organised a ramble to Vyrnwy in 1938. Elan was visited by Kensington Rambling Club in 1928, the South Western branch of the Cyclists’ Touring Club, and Cheltenham Motor Club in 1929; and the Newport Ramblers in 1935. Even though rambling around Thirlmere was discouraged, it was still included in accounts of trips to the Lake District by Lancaster Storey Students’ Association, Lancaster Cyclists’ Touring Club, and the Todmorden Licensed Victuallers’ outing, among others during the interwar years. Whether they were waterworks of repute or areas of beauty known more locally, reservoirs were becoming popular sites of leisure during this period.⁷⁵

Unlike angling, rambling was also more inclusive of women. Some forms of rambling, especially harsh all-night rambles, were seen as an activity only for men; however, women were increasingly involved in rambling organisations from the 1900s onwards.⁷⁶ Rambling was seen as a form of leisure that was compatible with dominant constructions of femininity, as with cycling and tennis.⁷⁷ The increased involvement of women was aided by organisations such as the CHA, which welcomed female participants. Although the CHA allowed women to mingle with the opposite sex, their behaviour was still framed ‘within a context of respectability’; for example, women were often castigated for flirting.⁷⁸ The CHA played a key role in establishing the moral practices of rambling, particularly on the development of rational behaviour; it is notable that many local CHA groups travelled to reservoirs to help instil this behaviour.⁷⁹

Although commented on less than men’s rambling, trips by the Embro [Edinburgh] Ladies Clarion Club to Gladhouse Reservoir in Midlothian, Scotland were noted by newspapers, while members of the Cooperative Women’s Guild in Nelson and the Fulledge Wesleyan Mothers’ Ramble visited reservoirs around Burnley and Nelson, Lancashire.⁸⁰ Pictures were published in newspapers showing women enjoying the idyllic countryside. One photograph showed a group of respectably dressed young women from Armley, a working-class area of Leeds, rambling around Blubberhouses in the middle of the Washburn Valley, taking a keen interest in the ruins of an old mill. Another showed two women looking at a map at Lindley Wood reservoir, dressed in clothing more attributable to middle-class ramblers. Whereas the women in the first photograph are inquisitive of the built environment, the women in the second are using maps to plot their journey, suggesting that they are comfortable with the tools of experienced walkers. Nevertheless, both photographs, published by the Leeds Mercury, suggest that regardless of class status, women could and did enjoy rural leisure.

It is clear, then, that waterworks were popular with walkers across the country. Despite this, access to rambling routes in the 1930s, like in many rural areas during this period in Britain, was greatly contested. Rambling groups came into conflict with municipal corporations and private water companies, in addition to private landowners, due to the amount of land purchased in rural areas to supply water to towns and cities.⁸¹ There were clear concerns about how ramblers could potentially affect the quality of the water supply, which saw municipal authorities cordon the edges of the reservoirs and place signs to warn off trespassers as at Thirlmere. There were also concerns from landowners in the surrounding areas of trespassing as these areas became desirable places to visit. The land-owning Fawkes family in the Washburn Valley took it on themselves to close a public right of way in 1883 after several encounters with trespassers and poachers on their estate, with little help offered by Leeds Corporation to negotiate on their behalf.⁸² This is a reminder of the strength of statutory powers as well as the delicate relationships water authorities had to engender with local landowners to keep the peace.

Issues over access to rural areas like Thirlmere and the Washburn Valley were already well established as rambling became popular among the working classes in the early twentieth century.⁸³ This tension reached a peak in the Washburn Valley during the 1930s, mirroring aforementioned national trends. As Leeds Corporation owned much more land in the Washburn Valley than the boundaries of the watersheds, the issue of access was especially contested. An editorial in the Yorkshire Evening Post in 1931 highlighted the issue. Responding to a complaint that a public path had been blocked and signs warning trespassers erected, a correspondent was sent to the valley to investigate. A farmer was interviewed, who stated that he had complained to Leeds Corporation that his land was being damaged by ramblers, and that stray dogs had chased two of his sheep into one of the reservoirs where they had drowned. However, it had been the Leeds Corporation, and not the farmer, that had closed the public path in an attempt to tackle what the Yorkshire Evening Post described as the ‘hooligan hiker and rampageous picnicker’.⁸⁴ The language used by the newspaper set the tone for further interventions on the subject, particularly the use of the word ‘hooligan’, an early twentieth-century term used to express concerns about the behaviour of urban male working-class youths.⁸⁵ The word ‘hiker’ is also noteworthy, a pejorative Americanism that referred to certain working-class, female and youth cultures that middle-class ramblers had left the city to escape.⁸⁶ The distinction between hikers and respectable, middle-class ramblers suggests a concern with the proliferation of working-class ramblers. The use of this distinction is notable, as it set the tone for much of the commentary to come, pointing to a concern with working-class access to the countryside.

Issues regarding access to areas of the countryside owned by municipal corporations were encountered beyond the Washburn Valley, with local branches of the Ramblers’ Federation at the forefront of these battles. Concerns were raised in 1935 over the prospect of access to the Derwent Valley following the construction of Ladybower reservoir, a struggle that formed part of a wider critique of what type of landscape was valued by ramblers: namely wilderness, savage grandeur and foreboding rocks.⁸⁷ Although signs prohibiting walkers had long been posted around Thirlmere, the Lake District Ramblers’ Federation expressed fears around prohibitions on rambling at Haweswater in light of Manchester Corporation’s reluctance to admit rights of way. After consulting legal advice, the federation concluded that such an act contravened the Manchester Corporation Act 1919 that gave Manchester permission to construct a waterworks at Haweswater, and that any efforts to obstruct the passage of ramblers should be reported to the federation.⁸⁸

The federation also became involved in access battles in the Washburn Valley. In 1932, the Yorkshire Post reported that a popular footpath at Dob Park Bridge in the Washburn Valley, ‘regarded by the rambling fraternity for many years as a public right of way’, had been closed by the Leeds Corporation’s waterworks department, the gate to the path padlocked, and prohibition notices displayed to warn ramblers. A letter received by the West Riding Ramblers’ Federation (WRRF) from the waterworks department was ‘couched in terms which the Federation considered arbitrary and lacking in courtesy’.⁸⁹ A delegation from the WRRF attended a meeting of the waterworks committee to ask for the reopening of the path for public use, which the committee declined, arguing that ‘the use of a private footpath by the public would depreciate the value for letting of farm lands through which the footpath runs’, especially a concern in the most popular rambling areas in the lower valley such as Dob Park and Lindley Wood.⁹⁰ The reason provided by the committee pertained to financial protection; while precise numbers are difficult to estimate, the popularity of the Washburn Valley as a rambling destination with both rambling clubs and day trippers resulted in a sizeable number of people walking near or over corporation land. Efforts needed to be taken to safeguard the corporation’s financial assets from the vast amount of people visiting the area. However, this reasoning may have masked an unease with working-class ramblers.

In the following years, the WRRF, a middle-class organisation, paid much attention to access to the Washburn Valley for ramblers, attempting to work with and, at times, pressure organisations such as Leeds Corporation, Wharfedale Rural District Council (WRDC) and the West Riding County Council in order to provide more access.⁹¹ This was exemplified at a meeting of the WRRF in Keighley in 1934, where it was reported that the owner of the Blubberhouses Moor district had made one path across the moor open to the public; the federation, however, had laid claim to a dozen.⁹² Despite this initial impasse, pressure from the federation bore fruit in 1935. At a meeting in Keighley in July, William Shaw, the federation’s secretary, was able to report on a compromise that saw seven paths on Blubberhouses moor approved by the WRDC.⁹³ A map was submitted to the meeting showing 106 paths across the valley that had been identified and agreed between the federation, WRDC, and Leeds Corporation. This was a coup for the federation, which had won greater access to the Washburn Valley. Although limited access to other areas of the countryside occurred during this period, most prominently the granting of limited access to areas of the Peak District owned by Sheffield Corporation a year later, the victory of WRRF was an early step in the direction of open access to the countryside.⁹⁴ It is also important to note that not all authorities were so accommodating. The Lake District Ramblers’ Federation continued to battle with the Manchester Corporation over access to Haweswater. In response to calls for full access to the area, the Manchester waterworks committee wrote to the federation to note that they considered access provided for following the construction of a new path, at a cost of £1,000, a conclusion the federation rejected.⁹⁵ Until legislation on general access to the countryside was passed, battles over access would continue to be fought in an ad hoc and uneven fashion.

Despite the success of the WRRF in gaining access to the Washburn Valley, this access remained couched within the framework of class. An unnamed letter from a member of the WRRF, possibly Shaw, outlined the process undertaken with the Leeds Corporation:

The Leeds Waterworks people are behaving very handsomely towards ramblers; we sent a deputation to see the clerk to the WRDC last week, and he informed them that the Leeds Waterworks Committee have scheduled 106 paths as rights-of-way in their waterworks area. We had a map of these at our meeting on Saturday and so far as we can see there is no serious omission. We were naturally delighted, as we had never anticipated this treatment. The Council Meeting on Saturday had to express agreement in part with the Leeds Waterworks engineer in his denunciation of ‘hikers’. Until recently it was possible to travel within walking distance of the Valley by tram from Leeds at a fare of 3d, and consequently the Washburn Valley caught all the rowdy element whose sole object was to get out into the country in the cheapest way possible, and make a row. This service has been taken off now, and the ‘hikers’ are in consequence now found in other haunts near the City. His statements were probably making the case to appear to be much worse than it really was, but in view of their action in regard to footpaths, we feel we can’t quarrel with them about that.⁹⁶

There was clear unease around granting access to the watershed to those deemed unrespectable, emphasised once more by the use of ‘hiker’. As Ben Anderson has highlighted, middle-class ramblers and mountaineers had been engaging in this distinction for decades; rambling was seen as a middle-class solution to middle-class problems regarding modernity and the city, so those outside of this specific bourgeois culture could only properly engage with the countryside if they proscribed to middle-class ideas of the ruminative impact of countryside leisure.⁹⁷ Members of the working class, and women, who did not enjoy the countryside as a way of combating the trials of urban modernity would fall into the ‘hiker’ category. This narrative also corresponds to visions of healthy citizenship that David Matless has identified during this period, which were defined as such by the ‘anti-citizen’ who acted in ways seen as unbecoming.⁹⁸ While the unnamed member of the WRRF sought to downplay the extent to which ‘hikers’ were disrupting rural leisure, they ultimately agreed with the sentiment expressed by the corporation. The removal of the cheap tram fare meant that those deemed undesirable could not reach the valley as easily, thereby solving the issue and making it easier to legitimise granting access to the countryside. Although the WRRF was a key organisation in helping to secure access to the Washburn Valley, the access secured continued to be regulated by middle-class ideals espoused by both organisations.

The unease expressed by the WRRF and the Leeds Corporation extended, once more, to the city’s newspapers, demonstrating again the role of the local press as an arena for debate and civic engagement. An article in the Leeds Mercury in 1936 highlighted comments by the waterworks committee chairman, Alderman E. J. Clarke, in which he argued that despite the waterworks committee providing a number of footpaths for ramblers, ‘the conduct of many ramblers had left a good deal to be desired’. This behaviour had resulted in damage to fences, walls and gates, which increased the risk of the reservoirs becoming polluted from general littering. The article ended with a call to arms: ‘The next time you go there keep a sharp look-out for careless or wantonly destructive people […] If you find any such, give them a piece of your mind!’⁹⁹ Further articles on the matter from Frank North and Sydney Moorhouse, both regular columnists of the Leeds Mercury, laid the blame on ‘an unruly element’, stating that they were ‘not true ramblers at all’.¹⁰⁰ This characterisation highlights the continued tension with increasing access to areas such as the Washburn Valley. Using terms such as ‘unruly element’ and ‘true ramblers’ indicates an unease with ramblers that did not conform to middle-class ideals of rambling, echoing the distinction between rambler and hiker and the social ordering of countryside leisure.¹⁰¹ This is further evidence of rambling behaviour being defined by how others act improperly. In reality, rambling groups were composed of myriad different social, cultural and political identities. For those like North and Moorhouse, the ‘true rambler’ was white, middle-class, and most likely male.¹⁰²

However, areas such as the Washburn Valley did become more accessible to the rambler during the 1930s. This was underscored by a survey of public rights of way for the parishes of Fewston and Blubberhouses following the passing of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, which saw the troublesome issue of access to the countryside pass from the ministry of agriculture to the ministry of town and country planning.¹⁰³ The survey listed seventeen paths in the parish of Fewston, totalling 7.77 miles of land, while sixteen paths in the parish of Blubberhouses were listed totalling 11.68 miles.¹⁰⁴ The combined figure for both was 19.45 miles, demonstrating that there was much more access to the Washburn Valley than during the interwar period. This was a victory for those who had campaigned as well as those who sought to benefit from better access.

The 1949 Act also had implications for Thirlmere, given the Lake District’s new-found status as one of the country’s first national parks in 1951, although control over access remained with the local authority. Prohibitive signs remained posted around the reservoir beyond the 1950s, while the North West Water Authority continued to vigorously protect the watershed after it took control of the supply in 1973.¹⁰⁵ The passing of the Act did little to satiate fears from water authorities about the impact of ramblers in catchment areas, as a letter to the editor of the Yorkshire Post outlined regarding the formation of a national park in the Peak District, which cited the lack of protections provided by the national parks legislation against water pollution.¹⁰⁶ Through the construction of reservoirs that appealed to aesthetic sensibilities, a sentiment actively pursued by local newspapers, water authorities helped to create a situation where waterworks became attractive areas for leisure. The discussions over access and the work of organisations like the West Riding Ramblers’ Federation eventually encouraged the use of these areas for rambling. The desire for the right sort of behaviour, though, saw authorities engage in a social ordering of the countryside, with tensions over who could or should use these spaces for leisure continuing into the post-war period.

Conclusion

Access to the countryside remained contested into the post-war period, an issue discussed by Tom Stephenson in his account of rambling, Forbidden Land. Stephenson highlights the role played by municipal water authorities in continuing to deny access to rural areas due to fears of pollution, despite the efforts of the Ramblers’ Association conducting scientific research that showed that ramblers had little to no impact on water supplies. This expanded on a comment Stephenson made in his column for the Daily Herald in 1939, in which he specifically cited Thirlmere, Vyrnwy and Elan as areas that should be opened up more to ramblers.¹⁰⁷

Political responses to the battles for access to the countryside seemed to point to a more optimistic future, with key legislation being passed in the Access to the Mountains Act 1939, the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 and the Access to the Countryside Act 1960. However, historians have disputed their effectiveness. John Sheail has argued that the 1939 Act was limited by its status as a private members’ bill that helped to further the cause of ramblers without having any tangible effect on access, while Gavin Parker and Neil Ravenscroft have noted that the 1949 Act did little to help ramblers access the countryside but helped landowners to maintain their stranglehold on access routes. For example, of the thirty-five thousand hectares of land that had been brought under access agreements by 1989, over half were in the Peak District, highlighting the limited political impact of the access mechanism within the Act nationwide.¹⁰⁸ Despite the effectiveness or otherwise of legislation, and direct action by ramblers, in 2020 the law of trespass continued to exclude access to ninety-two per cent of English land.¹⁰⁹

The struggles of leisure seekers throughout the twentieth century make it more important to highlight the actions of some municipal governments in opening up rural areas for leisure. What is clear is that approaches to the development of leisure around reservoirs were far from uniform, once again highlighting the importance of local case studies to unveiling a national story. Although not initially planned, angling was encouraged at the majority of the prominent waterworks schemes, with Manchester’s Thirlmere scheme the main outlier. The provision and quality of angling, though, differed, from free fishing for ratepayers in the Washburn Valley to the more expensive comforts of Vyrnwy Hotel. The right to fish in municipal reservoirs was also unevenly debated: in Leeds, the issue caused consternation in the council chamber, whereas in the case of Birmingham, the ability to fish was factored into the planning of Caban Coch reservoir. What was common among municipalities that encouraged fishing was the strengthening of the civic link between reservoirs and their respective cities – the success of fishing spoke to the success of municipal governments in being able to properly manage the activity and, therefore, properly manage the quality of the water supply. Anglers could play their part in not allowing an overabundance of fish, thereby fulfilling their civic duty to manage their water supply. The debate that raged in the pages of the Yorkshire Post was also evidence of civic engagement, with those in favour promoting the benefits to the city’s water supply as well as their own recreation.

The civic link stretched to ramblers, who, ultimately, wanted to explore areas of the countryside that had been aesthetically improved by urban engineering. As has been demonstrated, reservoirs across the country were popular with ramblers, even Thirlmere, where the Manchester Corporation took steps to disinterest visitors. Like angling, though, engagement with ramblers and water authorities was framed within middle-class ideals, which reflected the composition of urban associational culture more generally during this period. In the case of the Leeds Corporation, this was expressed overtly in its dismissal of ‘hikers’. As with angling, which was established as a middle-class pursuit, there remained a tension with members of the working class engaging with rural waterworks. The use of leisure to strength the civic link between the city and the country, then, was exclusionary; only those who behaved within the ideals of middle-class respectability could properly appreciate the significance of municipal achievement in engineering the countryside, something that applied to both fishing and rambling as seen in the debates discussed here. The issue of exclusivity continues to be a problem with modern landscapes and access to the countryside. While more recent research has focused on race and disability, this chapter demonstrates the importance of focusing on waterscapes for historical antecedents to flesh out the story of access and exclusion.¹¹⁰ It is also notable that ecology was at the forefront of concerns around the management of waterworks, even if these concerns were not expressed within that specific framework. Worries about the effects of fish on the water supply reflected genuine, if perhaps misguided, concerns over adversely affecting the water supply; worries about the polluting effects of ramblers, though, may well have been used to further mask class tensions.

Notes

1. 1.  Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, c.1780–c.1880 (Croom Helm, 1980), 9–10; Peter Borsay, A History of Leisure: The British Experience since 1500 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 9; Karl Spracklen, Constructing Leisure: Historical and Philosophical Debates (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 164

2. 2.  Dion Georgiou, ‘Redefining the Carnivalesque: The Construction of Ritual, Revelry and Spectacle in British Leisure Practices through the Idea and Model of “Carnival”, 1870–1939’, Sport in History 35, no. 3 (2015): 340, https://doi.org/10.1080/17460263.2015.1088462.

3. 3.  See Karen V. Lykke Syse, ‘Ideas of Leisure, Pleasure and the River in Early Modern England’, in Perceptions of Water in Britain from Early Modern Times to the Present: An Introduction, ed. Karen V. Lykke Syse and Terje Oestigaard (BRIC Press, 2010), 35–58; Spracklen, Constructing Leisure; Heasim Sul, ‘The King’s Book of Sports: The Nature of Leisure in Early Modern England’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 17, no. 4 (2000): 172, https://doi.org/10.1080/09523360008714153.

4. 4.  Research on citizenship has been growing in recent years, particularly as a response to post-structural critiques of urban governmentality. See Helen Meller, ‘Urban Renewal and Citizenship: The Quality of Life in British Cities, 1890–1990’, Urban History 22, no. 1 (1995): 63–84, https://doi.org/10.1017/S096392680001138X; Ben Anderson, ‘A Liberal Countryside? The Manchester Ramblers’ Federation and the “Social Readjustment” of Urban Citizens, 1929–1936’, Urban History 38, no. 1 (2011): 84–102, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926811000058; Tom Hulme, After the Shock City: Urban Culture and the Making of Modern Citizenship (Boydell Press, 2019).

5. 5.  Melanie Tebbutt, ‘Rambling and Manly Identity in Derbyshire’s Dark Peak, 1880s–1920s’, The Historical Journal 49, no. 4 (2006): 1137, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X06005760; Claire Langhamer, Women’s Leisure in England 1920–60 (Manchester University Press, 2000), 77.

6. 6.  Andrew Done and Richard Muir, ‘The Landscape History of Grouse Shooting in the Yorkshire Dales’, Rural History, 12, no. 2 (2001): 195–210, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793300002442; Alistair J. Durie, ‘Game Shooting: An Elite Sport c.1870–1980’, Sport in History 28, no. 3 (2008): 431–49, https://doi.org/10.1080/17460260802315504.

7. 7.  Marion Sharples, The Fawkes Family and Their Estates in Wharfedale, 1819–1936 (Thoresby Society, 1997), 51.

8. 8.  One example of this was E. W. Dixon, a water engineer for Harrogate Corporation who leased Fewston Grange in 1905 for five years with exclusive fishing rights in the River Washburn between Swinsty and Lindley Wood reservoirs. Another man, Fraser Douglas, who worked in property in Ilkley, paid £75 a year in 1923 for sporting rights that allowed him to shoot in the southern part of the Washburn estate. Leeds Corporation, ‘Leeds Waterworks Committee Minutes, volume 8: 1903–1910’, West Yorkshire Archive Service (WYAS), LLC22/1/8, 100; Leeds Corporation, ‘Leeds Waterworks Committee Minutes, volume 10: 1912–1929’, WYAS, LLC22/1/10, 225.

9. 9.  John Martin, ‘The Transformation of Lowland Game Shooting in England and Wales in the Twentieth Century: The Neglected Metamorphosis’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 29, no. 8 (2012): 1145–46, https://doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2012.690226.

10. 10.  ‘The Council and the Vyrnwy Hotel’, Liverpool Echo, 13 February 1890, 3.

11. 11.  An example of this can be seen in ‘Grouse Shooting: An Encouraging Opening’, Yorkshire Post, 13 August 1909, 3.

12. 12.  Thomas H. Nelson, The Birds of Yorkshire: Being A Historical Account of the Avi-Fauna of the County (A. Brown and Sons, 1907), 517; Durie, ‘Game Shooting’, 432.

13. 13.  Leeds Corporation, ‘Leeds Waterworks Committee Minutes, volume 7: 1896–1903’, WYAS, LLC22/1/7, 329.

14. 14.  Richard Coopey, ‘A River Does Indeed Run Through It: Angling and Society in Britain since 1800’, in Perceptions of Water in Britain from Early Modern Times to the Present: An Introduction, ed. Karen V. Lykke Syse and Terje Oestigaard (BRIC Press, 2010), 59.

15. 15.  Richard Coopey and Tim Shakesheff, ‘Angling and Nature: Environment, Leisure, Class and Culture in Britain 1750–1975’, in Common Ground: Integrating the Social and Environmental in History, ed. Geneviève Massard-Guilbaud and Stephen Mosley (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), 28–9.

16. 16.  ‘Leeds City Council: The Township Controversy’, Yorkshire Post, 4 September 1902, 5.

17. 17.  Lykke Syse, ‘Ideas of Leisure’, 38.

18. 18.  Marianna Dudley, ‘Muddying the Waters: Recreational Conflict and Rights of Use of British Rivers’, Water History 9, no. 3 (2017): 259–77, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12685-017-0193-2.

19. 19.  John Lowerson, ‘Angling’, in Sport in Britain: A Social History, ed. Tony Mason (Cambridge University Press, 1989), 14; Coopey and Shakesheff, ‘Angling and Nature’, 18.

20. 20.  Liverpool Water Committee, ‘Liverpool Water Committee Minute Book, October 1895–December 1896’, Liverpool Record Office, 352 MIN/WTR/1/35, 99.

21. 21.  Manchester Corporation, ‘Proceedings of the Waterworks Committee, volume 44: 1895–96’, Greater Manchester County Record Office, GB127.M231/2/1/44, 25.

22. 22.  Leeds Corporation, ‘Leeds Waterworks Committee Minutes, volume 4: 1878–1885’, 11 July 1879, WYAS, LLC22/1/4, 52.

23. 23.  Special correspondent, ‘Elan Valley’s Attractions for Midlanders: New Holiday Resort’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 14 July 1904, 6.

24. 24.  Harriet Ritvo, The Dawn of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere, and Modern Environmentalism (University of Chicago Press, 2009), 123–4.

25. 25.  ‘Untitled’, Huddersfield Chronicle, 9 February 1886, 10.

26. 26.  Special correspondent, ‘Elan Valley’s Attractions for Midlanders’.

27. 27.  Figures collected from Birmingham Daily Gazette.

28. 28.  Victor Westropp, The Lake Vyrnwy Fishing Book (Aberdeen University Press, 1979), 40.

29. 29.  Figures collected from Birmingham Daily Gazette.

30. 30.  Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities (Penguin, 1968).

31. 31.  ‘Editorial’, Liverpool Echo, 13 December 1888, 3.

32. 32.  ‘Editorial’, Liverpool Echo, 2 October 1890, 3

33. 33.  ‘Lake Vyrnwy Hotel’, Yorkshire Post, 8 July 1933, 17.

34. 34.  Coopey, ‘A River Does Indeed Run Through It’, 62, 67.

35. 35.  Leeds Corporation, ‘Leeds Waterworks Committee Minutes, volume 4: 1878–1885’, 95, 126.

36. 36.  ‘City Fisheries: Trout in Good Number and Excellent Condition’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 15 December 1913, 10.

37. 37.  Leeds Corporation, ‘Leeds Waterworks Committee Minutes, volume 4: 1878–1885’, 126.

38. 38.  Leeds Corporation, ‘Leeds Waterworks Committee Minutes, volume 4: 1878–1885’, 365.

39. 39.  Richard Holt, Sport and the British: A Modern History (Oxford University Press, 1989), 56.

40. 40.  ‘Untitled’, Field, 12 October 1895, 9; Jack Pike, ‘Angling notes’, Cricket and Football Field, 4 January 1908, 12.

41. 41.  Leeds Corporation, ‘Leeds Waterworks Committee Minutes, volume 7: 1896–1903’, 339–40, 344–45.

42. 42.  ‘Leeds City Council: The Township Controversy’, Yorkshire Post.

43. 43.  Jeffrey Hill, Sport, Leisure and Culture in Twentieth-Century Britain (Palgrave, 2002), 121–22.

44. 44.  Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830–1885 (Routledge, 1978), 65; Brad Beaven, Leisure, Citizenship and Working-Class Men in Britain, 1850–1945 (Manchester University Press, 2005), 88.

45. 45.  ‘Leeds City Council: The Township Controversy’, Yorkshire Post.

46. 46.  ‘Fishing in Vyrnwy Lake’, Liverpool Echo, 10 April 1889, 4.

47. 47.  K. G. Arnold, ‘Angling at Fewston and Swinsty Reservoirs’, Yorkshire Post, 16 September 1902, 8.

48. 48.  Arnold, ‘Angling at Fewston and Swinsty Reservoirs’.

49. 49.  W. Richardson, ‘Angling at Fewston and Swinsty Reservoirs’, Yorkshire Post, 17 September 1902, 5.

50. 50.  H. Knight Horsfield, ‘Angling in Fewston and Swinsty Reservoirs’, Yorkshire Post, 18 September 1902, 5.

51. 51.  Edmund Barker, ‘Angling in Fewston and Swinsty Reservoirs’, Yorkshire Post, 20 September 1902, 11.

52. 52.  W. C. Dawson, ‘Fishing in the Leeds Reservoirs’, Yorkshire Post, 25 September 1902, 9.

53. 53.  Dawson, ‘Fishing in the Leeds Reservoirs’.

54. 54.  Borsay, A History of Leisure, 61–2; Leeds Corporation, ‘Leeds Waterworks Committee Minutes, volume 10: 1912–1929’, 100, 115.

55. 55.  A. H. Woodward, ‘Otter Had the Laugh: Angling’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 21 May 1949, 5.

56. 56.  ‘Women Anglers Banned’, Dundee Courier, 7 July 1934, 3.

57. 57.  Figures gained from the Lake District National Park website, ‘Learning: Lake District Facts and Figures’, accessed 23 July 2020, https://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/learning/factsandfigures.

58. 58.  David Hey, ‘Kinder Scout and the Legend of the Mass Trespass’, Agricultural History Review 59, no. 2 (2013): 200–201, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23317099.

59. 59.  Jeremy Burchardt, Paradise Lost: Rural Idyll and Social Change since 1800 (I. B. Tauris, 2002), 121.

60. 60.  A. W. C., ‘Up the Washburn Valley: A Ramble in Winter’, Leeds Mercury, 4 March 1893, 17.

61. 61.  Burchardt, Paradise Lost, 125.

62. 62.  ‘Country Rambles Around Leeds: For Summer Evenings or Holidays’, Leeds Mercury, 24 June 1905, 17.

63. 63.  ‘A Whitsuntide Holiday Ramble to Lake Vyrnwy and the Berwyns’, Coventry Herald, 14 June 1895, 6.

64. 64.  ‘Fewston’, Wharfedale and Airedale Observer, 30 March 1894, 5.

65. 65.  ‘Economical Holidays’, Montgomeryshire Echo, 21 July 1906, 5.

66. 66.  ‘Untitled’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 23 September 1933, 9; ’Untitled’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 5 May 1934, 14.

67. 67.  Ritvo, Dawn of Green, 130–31.

68. 68.  See The English Lake District, including Furness Abbey, Shap Spa, Seascale, etc., etc. (George Philip and Son, 1895), 77–8.

69. 69.  Ben Harker, ‘ “The Manchester Rambler”: Ewan MacColl and the 1932 Mass Trespass’, History Workshop Journal 59, no. 1 (2005): 220, https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbi016.

70. 70.  Burchardt, Paradise Lost, 127; Hey, ‘Kinder Scout’, 199–216; David Prynn, ‘The Clarion Clubs, Rambling and the Holiday Associations in Britain since the 1890s’, Journal of Contemporary History 11, no. 2 (1976): 65–77, https://doi.org/10.1177/002200947601100204.

71. 71.  ‘A Very Good Friday Out-of-Doors’, Leeds Mercury, 30 March 1929, 1; also see ‘Holiday of Early Risers’, Yorkshire Post, 10 June 1930, 10; ‘Good Send-Off for Easter’, Yorkshire Post, 15 April 1933, 7; ‘Thousands Leave W. Riding Towns’, Yorkshire Post, 29 May 1939, 9; ‘Best Holiday Weather in the North’, Yorkshire Post, 8 August 1939, 8.

72. 72.  Harvey Taylor, A Claim on the Countryside: A History of the British Outdoor Movement (Keele University Press, 1997), 228.

73. 73.  Countryman, ‘A Wayfarer’s Diary’, Leeds Mercury, 12 January 1938, 6; ‘Rambling Club Notices’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 3 September 1932, 6; ‘Rambling Club Notices’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 29 August 1931, 3; ‘A Midnight Ramble’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 27 September 1929, 16.

74. 74.  Sydney Moorhouse, ‘Rambling Notes’, Leeds Mercury, 11 September 1935; Countryman, ‘A Wayfarer’s Diary’, Leeds Mercury, 26 October 1938, 6; Countryman, ‘A Wayfarer’s Diary’, Leeds Mercury, 5 April 1939, 6; Cycling correspondent, ‘Record Cycle Ride’, Leeds Mercury, 9 February 1935, 11.

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81. 81.  Burchardt, Paradise Lost, 128.

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83. 83.  Hey, ‘Kinder Scout’, 201.

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85. 85.  Heather Shore, London’s Criminal Underworlds, c.1720–c.1930: A Social and Cultural History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 147.

86. 86.  Anderson, ‘A Liberal Countryside?’, 96.

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88. 88.  Rucksack, ‘Rambling Notes’, Lancashire Evening Post, 14 January 1937, 3.

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107. 107.  Tom Stephenson, Forbidden Land: The Struggle for Access to Mountain and Moorland, ed. Ann Holt (Manchester University Press, 1989), 105–15; Tom Stephenson, ‘Our Birthright’, Daily Herald, 7 January 1939, 14.

108. 108.  Sheail, ‘Access to Mountains Act 1939’, 59; Gavin Parker and Neil Ravenscroft, ‘Benevolence, Nationalism and Hegemony: Fifty Years of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949’, Leisure Studies, 18, no. 4 (1999): 303, https://doi.org/10.1080/026143699374871.

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