Conclusion Going back for more: urban demand on the rural environment

Democratic landscapes?

It is worth commenting on the fact that water authorities privileged particular reservoir development. Many reservoirs were built in uplands so they could utilise gravity to send water down pipes towards towns and cities, rather than rely on expensive pumping systems which required constant fuel to operate. This land was often deemed to not hold agricultural value, particularly in the north where arable land was scarcer than in the south. This also meant that the land was cheaper, as it was mainly used for sheep grazing.⁴ This led to tensions, though, which have been hinted at throughout the chapters. Municipal authorities held little regard for the needs of farming land. As such, the process of acquiring land for reservoir development was highly undemocratic: as the nineteenth century progressed, municipal authorities in particular were able to gain powers of compulsory purchase. Leeds Corporation had to negotiate with various landed interests during the passage of their bill in 1867 as seen in Chapter 1. By the time Liverpool and Birmingham came to Parliament to lobby for their own powers in the 1880s and 1890s, seven-year compulsory purchase powers were included in their water Acts.⁵ Leeds Corporation gained compulsory purchase powers in the 1890s under the guise of pollution protection. Members of the council felt that local farmers were not taking all the steps they could to prevent effluent entering the reservoirs, so gained powers in an 1897 Improvement Act to compulsorily purchase land.⁶ This had an enormous effect on the Washburn Valley, which had until that point largely been populated by smallholdings. Over the turn of the twentieth century, the Washburn Valley became a large landholding for Leeds Corporation, turning residents into tenant farmers. The managing of rural areas in such a way extended the urban footprint, with municipal authorities coming to govern the countryside to improve public health, which led to inevitable tension.

Naturally, these powers could – and did – negatively affect rural areas in some cases. As has already been mentioned, Birmingham’s controversial powers in the Birmingham Corporation Water Act 1892 led to a process that David Lewis Brown has compared to the Highland clearances.⁷ There is also a national dynamic to bear in mind with Birmingham and Liverpool’s schemes: both authorities uprooted local Welsh residents to provide for English cities. It is no surprise that this resulted in a backlash when a scheme was proposed at Tryweryn in the 1960s. In the Washburn Valley, the residents of West End had anticipated a fourth reservoir to submerge their homes for so long that the area was prematurely depopulated, with little surprise when Leeds Corporation eventually built Thruscross Reservoir in the 1960s. The few locals who did stay had little recourse to fight the corporation, with the main opposition coming from rural authorities more concerned with transport links than displacement.

These changes could result in positive consequences for how rural spaces were used. There is an intersection here with ideas around citizenship, which by the end of the nineteenth century focused on people as much as the built environment.⁸ Fishing in the reservoirs was conceptualised very literally by urban residents themselves within a narrative of citizenship: fish help to keep the water clean by eating detritus, and by fishing in the Washburn Valley reservoirs, middle-class anglers would be helping to maintain a manageable number of fish. Fishing and rambling were also part of a programme of rational recreation that was promoted as a way to combat the evils of urban life. In promoting the cultural landscapes of areas like Vyrnwy or the Elan Valley, people were encouraged to enjoy these areas themselves, moving outside the city for respectable recreation. Civic improvement was a part of this narrative, but creating and curating a space in rural areas for the pursuit of leisure was also part of a discourse of citizenship. As the focus shifted to working-class participation in narratives of citizenship during the interwar period, the efforts of Liverpool Corporation to educate its residents on the uses of timber from the afforestation scheme at Vyrnwy was important. This can be seen as an extension of the type of civic education undertaken in cities like Manchester during the interwar period, educational programmes favoured by urban planners such as Patrick Geddes as a way of engaging the working class in how the cities operated. This is an example of how cities tried to mould their working-class residents in a way that measured up to the economic ambitions of an increasingly globalised world.⁹

Even here, though, we can see a democratic deficit around these waterscapes. As seen in examples through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, local opposition was held in little regard until the 1960s. Many could not afford to challenge a scheme in Parliament. Even when schemes were challenged, as with Thirlmere in the 1870s, this was based on cultural and aesthetic grounds rather than economic or political.¹⁰ When reservoir schemes were completed there were issues with inclusion. Chapter 5 demonstrated the issues that some faced accessing areas like the Washburn Valley for leisure. Working-class leisure seekers wanting to fish or ramble were often decried as hikers, their behaviour highlighted by councillors and newspaper correspondents. While rambling was more inclusive in terms of gender than fishing, it is clear that the countryside was conceptualised as a middle-class space where certain behaviours were not tolerated.¹¹ Problems with access to the countryside continued to be experienced as the twentieth century progressed, particularly for those with disabilities as recent research has highlighted.¹² As such, waterscapes such as these demonstrate the democratic void that was present between the urban and the rural, with urban areas often privileged at the expense of the livelihoods of those living and working in the country. In some cases, local people adapted to this change as in the Washburn Valley, but there was a democratic and inclusionary void nonetheless.

Rural modernism

One of the major themes of the book has been how structures like reservoirs can be seen within a rural modernist framework. The transformative effect of infrastructure built after the Second World War on rural places was profound, resulting in mass electricity networks, pylons, power stations and so on.¹³ The reservoirs of the post-war period fit into this framework, but one of the themes of this book has been to highlight how the effect of infrastructural development on the landscape pre-1945 could also fit into a rural modernist way of thinking. Reservoir development in the nineteenth century was conceptualised in Romantic terms, influenced by the upland landscapes that were often targeted as well as the supposed beautifying effects of construction on places of non-outstanding natural beauty.¹⁴ Chapters 4 and 5 focused on how these depictions helped to make areas like the Washburn Valley and Lake Vyrnwy more popular with urban tourists. However, these sites were used and depicted in increasingly modern ways as the twentieth century progressed. Chapter 3 highlighted how these areas became working landscapes for afforestation, which, especially in the case of Liverpool, helped to strengthen the civic link between the city and the countryside.

This book has also traced the development of rural modernism, not as a product of the post-war period but as a sentiment that grew and developed from nineteenth-century Romanticism. Fictional depictions in the form of novels and film were increasingly important to the development of rural modernism. The complexity of Francis Brett Young’s The House Under the Water speaks to its rural modernist sensibilities. Phil’s despair at the loss of Nant Escob and Forest Fawr is remedied in the end by the realisation that the spirit of the place endured. Far from being a maudlin story of rural nostalgia, this conclusion demonstrates the resilience of rural places in the face of modern change, something that is evidenced by the adaptation of community in places like the Washburn Valley seen in Chapter 6.¹⁵ Similarly, The Last Days of Dolwyn presents a more complex picture of the social impact of reservoir development, especially in the context of nascent Welsh nationalism. Merri’s decision to flood the village she dearly loved to protect her son is an apt metaphor for a rural modernist approach to landscape development, one that recognises the complexity of feeling rural communities endured. While Welsh nationalists suggested that schemes like Tryweryn were an act of English imperialism, Martin Johnes has noted that communities on the ground held more nuanced feelings: some wanted to leave and embrace a more modern life.¹⁶ As with The House Under the Water, outputs like The Last Days of Dolwyn recognise that changes to the landscape were not solely mired in feelings of loss and nostalgia, again evidenced by community responses to change in the twentieth century looked at in the final chapter. This, then, helps to develop ideas around rural modernism, complimenting recent work that demonstrates a longer lineage of ideas around infrastructure in the countryside.¹⁷ It also contributes to moving studies of landscape away from studies of hedgerows and gardens towards sites that are not as immediately attractive but offer rich potential for social and cultural analysis.¹⁸

Civic identity

Civic identity has been the central thread of this monograph, with each theme intersecting with civic pride in one way or another. This is important to highlight in and of itself, but especially so for the twentieth century as waterworks have more readily been associated with national rather than local or civic identity. There is logic to this approach. When Denis Cosgrove, Barbara Roscoe and Simon Rycroft explored the spatial and cultural meanings behind Rutland Water, the historical context was somewhat different to that looked at here – water supply was controlled by regional water boards, which would ultimately become privatised regional water companies.¹⁹ As those private companies continue to operate, in spite of their unpopularity, rising water charges and the discharge of sewage into waterways, it is easy to conceptualise water on the regional or national level rather than the local or the civic. But civic identity was a driving force behind much of the development of water infrastructure in British cities well into the 1960s. Commentators continued to link water from disparate rural areas with the city it was destined to serve – ‘Birmingham water’ rather than water sourced in the Welsh uplands flowing into the River Claerwen that was dammed to provide Birmingham with water. Citizens of Liverpool were educated on what their wood from Vyrnwy supported. The Washburn Valley reservoirs were deemed to have contributed to such an idyllic scene that the area was dubbed the ‘Leeds Lake District’ – all the cultural connotations of one of the most famous rural landscapes of Britain appropriated to describe an area that belonged, both literally and metaphorically, to the people of Leeds.

The continued engagement with civic identity and civic pride, albeit expressed in different ways, demonstrates that wider significance of civic identity in the twentieth century. The nineteenth century was certainly a high point for engagement with civic identity, as Simon Gunn has highlighted by focusing on the development of grand buildings like town halls, as well as civic and funeral processions for local worthies.²⁰ Waterworks projects were tangible examples of the scientific and technical prowess of the city, as well as proof that the city could provide for ever-growing populations and industries. While the opening of reservoirs as in the Washburn or Elan valleys may not have been as grand as the opening of civic buildings like town halls, they were still inflected with the same tropes, such as the boosterish language and processional culture. In being opened by a monarch, the Elan Valley reservoirs were an example of how the local was increasingly intersecting with the national and international, something echoed in the 1950s when Claerwen reservoir was opened by Elizabeth II. As traditional forms of civic pride declined into the twentieth century, it is reasonable to assume that national and imperial identities took precedence, and there is evidence to suggest this. However, as Brad Beavan has highlighted, the imperial very much intersected with the local in times of war, particularly when there was local involvement in conflicts like the South African Wars.²¹ Furthermore, civic identity propelled urban development forward in different ways during the twentieth century, not just in terms of waterworks but also housing, retail and urban planning.²² The opening of reservoirs in the post-war period continued to link the city with the country, if not in the elaborate and extroverted ways of the nineteenth century – the water fountain of Manchester and Birmingham replaced by the Leeds journalist’s coffee cup.

The link between identity and waterworks extended beyond Britain. In some countries, this was linked to imperial identities. This is particularly the case in arid countries such as Australia, where technological modernity could provide abundant water, at least for a time. In Perth, Western Australia, the development of water infrastructure was linked to imperial modernity; the ability to wash a car or keep a lawn green in arid conditions helped residents to consider themselves as part of an imperial hierarchy. This meant that during times of drought residents would flout restrictions in order to keep their gardens green.²³ In Texas, new dams were built to facilitate urban development in Austin. Three structures were built between 1937 and 1941, aided by New Deal funding. Andrew Busch has examined the impact of these reservoirs in detail, including their use in a celebration of water called Aquafest.²⁴ Like with the reservoirs in Britain explored here, civic pride towards the Austin watershed continued to be expressed throughout the twentieth century. As the waterworks were very literally responsible for the making of modern Austin, it is no surprise that this link between the city and its watershed was celebrated into the 1980s when changing demographics affected the relationship. The reservoirs not only became symbols of Austin’s climate resilience, albeit artificially, but also of Austin’s independence from private interests.²⁵ New waterworks in India after independence also underlined a commitment to local over national autonomy, as in the case of Bilaspur, northern India.²⁶

Civic identity, then, continued to be an important factor in the development and management of waterworks projects in major cities in and beyond Britain. The extent to which this applied to all cities will, no doubt, have varied, but in the case studies looked at here it is safe to say that the ability of the city to provide and support its citizens and businesses was key, not just in a literal, political sense but in a cultural sense too. As the second half of the twentieth century progressed, changes to waterworks management – from local to regional to private – meant that the civic dimensions of waterworks declined in importance and memory, as in Austin. The importance of waterworks to towns and cities in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries would be worth investigating. For some cities like Leeds, the Washburn Valley is easily reachable for many, if not all, by car or taxi. The valley continues to be a site of leisure for city dwellers thanks to the efforts of Yorkshire Water in helping to landscape the reservoirs for walking, although the recent implementation of parking charges perhaps challenges this commitment.²⁷ Additionally, how civic pride intersected with private water companies in cities like Bristol and Newcastle would also be worth further study. While not operated by municipal government, private water companies were often run on behalf of a town or city, and often included prominent civic figures on their boards. How these privately run ventures intersected with civic pride and urban governance awaits future research.

Environment and the Promethean project

In order to secure good supplies of potable water, municipal corporations, as well as private water companies, built waterworks systems that altered rural environments. The construction of reservoirs, both in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, resulted in a variety of changes to the surrounding landscape. The subsidence of Fewston village in the Washburn Valley was the consequence of building a socio-technology without having a prior requisite understanding of the pressures the landscape could take. This was a relatively minor event – given the scale of disasters at Holmfirth in 1852 and Dale Dyke in 1864, or the subsequent event in Johnstown, Pennsylvania – that caused concern for the structural integrity of the Vyrnwy dam.²⁸ The floodings of West End and Capel Celyn have been treated here in social terms, but they were also examples of landscape transformation, a loss of rural landscape that had been lived on, worked on and consumed for hundreds of years. However, the thread that runs through all of these examples of environmental change is the enduring attitude towards the rural environment, as encapsulated in the reporting of Claerwen and Thruscross reservoirs; reservoirs were an example of the Promethean project: nature was there to be conquered in order to better serve towns and cities.²⁹

As we’ve seen, municipal governments continued to alter the rural landscape after reservoirs had been constructed. Compulsory land purchases were instigated to ostensibly better protect the reservoirs from pollution. The subsequent afforestation schemes also altered the rural environment, introducing new, non-native trees. However, the treatment of unemployed workers on the Washburn Valley afforestation scheme further emphasised attitudes to the environment. As the Yorkshire Post reported in 1913, more than sixty per cent of the trees planted had failed.³⁰ The corporation did not provide the unemployed men with the training or the tools to properly attempt the work, highlighting that the social and political ramifications of the scheme were more important than the ecological consequences. Once more, the purpose of nature was to better serve urban settlements in order to provide resources and, in this case, social provision.

This attitude towards nature, which was prevalent across the period under study despite a growing interest in ecology, was linked to the wider conceptualisation of nature.³¹ Maria Kaika has argued that the city/nature dialectic encapsulated positive and negative connotations of both: either the city was the place of technological modernity set against wild nature that had to be tamed to better serve urban interests, or the city was the place of industry, dirt and poverty set against the pristine rural idyll.³² Indeed, the creation of ‘second nature’ in cities – that is, artificial sites of nature – is linked to this dialectic, as Matthew Gandy has shown in the case of New York City’s Central Park, with its recreation of supposed pristine wilderness that echoed the Catskill Mountains.³³ Both of these conceptions of nature have been analysed here. While Chapter 2 highlighted the desire of local authorities and engineers to conquer the wilderness of nature, Chapters 4 and 5 examined how nature in places like the Washburn or Elan valleys was positively conceptualised, viewed through the prism of the Romantic rambler and the pursuer of leisure.

It is clear that reservoirs were sites of socionature, their construction the result of social forces mixing with natural agency. The landscape was an active agent in the formation of the reservoirs, both in how the contours of the land were used for the siting of the reservoirs and in the problems faced during construction that resulted in amendments to the original plans. Similarly, the reservoirs, as socionatural sites, impacted negatively on nature and society locally. Not only was the land on which Fewston village was built damaged by the water pressure of Swinsty Reservoir, but homes were rendered uninhabitable. Local people were displaced by reservoir projects, loudly in the case of Capel Celyn, more quietly in the Elan, Claerwen and Washburn valleys. Afforestation schemes altered the watershed of the reservoirs, with the introduction of non-native trees to the valley, but also had social implications for how the unemployed labourers of Leeds were treated. Indeed, the writings of newspaper correspondents and guidebook writers, who sought to promote these rural areas as improved by urban engineering, exaggerated the romantic elements of their cultural landscapes, and so also participated in the remaking of nature.

Thus, the impact of the reservoirs on the rural environment was multifaceted, a conclusion made possible by approaching the study from the perspective of socionature. Viewing the reservoirs as sites of socionature can help in moving beyond the nature/city dialectic emphasised by contemporaries to see them as an amalgam of urban and rural and, therefore, part of a wider urban ecology. This also helps us to see that the hinterland relationship is reciprocal rather than a one-way process. As William Cronon has shown, cities cannot be separated from their environments, and the environmental impact of cities reaches well beyond municipal borders.³⁴ But in looking at issues like afforestation, how cultural landscapes were remade and how these waterscapes were used for leisure, we can see that this hinterland exchange went both ways. Approaching the history of water supply and reservoir construction from the perspective of socionature can aid historians in viewing the ways in which urban and rural settings are interdependent, to better reconcile the relationship between nature and the city.³⁵

The here and now

To return to where Waterscapes began, examples and debates on the history of reservoir development over the past one hundred and fifty years have currency in the present. Record temperatures were noted in the summer of 2022 in the United Kingdom, while much of Europe and the rest of the world suffered incredibly hot summers in 2023 and 2024, even if the United Kingdom did not.³⁶ Increased water consumption as well as a lack of reservoir development since the 1990s has led the sector to become vulnerable to drought, which will be experienced with more regularity as the effects of climate change increasingly take hold. This has brought renewed focus on the supply of water but also the governance of the sector more generally.

There are a number of issues to point to here. First, the increase in consumption in 2023 points to the failure of water companies to reinforce the need to restrict water usage during times of shortage. Second, and perhaps more seriously, it reflects a failure on the part of the water companies themselves, which have been accused of taking record profits but not investing in key infrastructure, with some water loss attributed to outdated and inadequate infrastructure. In December 2022, Thames Water posted profits of nearly £500 million despite an increase in the number of burst pipes.³⁷ More seriously, it was reported in June 2023 that the United Kingdom’s water regulator Ofwat and the government were preparing to take Thames Water into temporary national ownership after it was revealed that the company had a £10 billion financial hole amid accusations of asset stripping.³⁸ This all comes at a difficult time for the water industry amidst public outrage at dumping of sewage into waterways as well as increased water rates during a cost-of-living crisis. At the start of 2025, Thames Water continues to be plagued by financial difficulties, while investigations have revealed that money earmarked for environmental clean-up was diverted to pay bonuses and dividends to shareholders.³⁹

As drought is set to become a more regular occurrence in Britain, the attitude of water companies seems to have shifted on how to cope with such extreme weather. For the first time since the 1990s, water companies are considering building new reservoirs to help meet increased demand. As noted at the start of this book, in March 2023 Ofwat gave the green light to further consultation on three new reservoirs in Oxfordshire, Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire.⁴⁰ This change in attitude is perhaps linked to the political milieu of 2022, an extension of the then UK government’s disposition for announcing big solutions to big problems – forty new hospitals to help reduce waiting lists in the NHS, eight new nuclear reactors to help the energy crisis – without providing reassurances or substance as to whether they will actually happen or discussing the potential issues with such schemes. The reports produced by Ofwat that began this book point to the multiple issues that these reservoir schemes face, not least because water companies have not adequately engaged with heritage organisations and local stakeholders.⁴¹ As the battles against Thirlmere in the 1870s, Ullswater in the 1950s, and Tryweryn in the 1960s highlight, there are social, ecological and cultural costs to building new reservoirs which need to be seriously considered by water authorities, regulators and the UK government. As this book shows, though, reservoirs can be beneficial to rural areas, drawing in leisure seekers, stimulating local economies, and further developing cultural conceptions of the countryside. Additionally, there are no easy answers as to how to provide safe, potable water in the twenty-first century, as Joe Williams, Stefan Bouzarovski and Eric Swyngedouw, as well as Ruth Morgan, have highlighted regarding the energy-intensive nature of desalination in hotter countries like Australia and the USA.⁴² There is always a cost to socionatural structures like reservoirs to both society and ecology. It is striking that in California, pressure has been building to restore the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, controversially dammed by San Francisco in the early twentieth century, while maintaining the water and power usage that comes from the valley.⁴³ Regulators and policy makers need to be sure that building new reservoirs, furthering our dependence on ever-increasing water supply rather than rationing what we already have access to, is the right way to approach our future, which is set to become ever more unstable. Learning about the impact of reservoirs in a more holistic fashion, as set out here, might be a place to start.

Notes

1. 1.  Andrew McTominey, ‘Water and the Modern Engineered City: The Association of Water Engineers in a British and Transnational Context, 1896–1914’, Water History 12, no. 2 (2020): 131–49, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12685-020-00249-1.

2. 2.  Jill Payne, ‘Constructing the Kielder Landscape: Plantations, Dams and the Romantic Ideal’, in Local Places, Global Processes: Histories of Environmental Change in Britain and Beyond, ed. Peter Coates et al. (Oxbow Books, 2016), 97–108.

3. 3.  Andrew McTominey, ‘Waterworks, Municipal Government and the Environment in Twentieth-Century Britain’, Urban History 51, no. 3 (2024): 600–615, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926823000597.

4. 4.  Matthew Kelly, Quartz and Feldspar: Dartmoor – A British Landscape in Modern Times (Vintage, 2016), 278.

5. 5.  Liverpool Corporation Waterworks Act 1880, 43 & 44 Vict. c. cxliii, 7–32. Available at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/Vict/43-44/143/contents/enacted; Birmingham Corporation Water Act 1892, 55 & 56 Vict. c. clxxiii, held by Library of Birmingham, L/F/45/3; 329596.

6. 6.  Leeds Corporation Act 1897, 60 & 61 Vict. c. cxcix, held by Leeds Central Library, LQ352, 20. Available at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/Vict/60-61/199/contents/enacted.

7. 7.  David Lewis Brown, The Elan Valley Clearance: The Fate of the People and Places Affected by the 1892 Elan Valley Reservoir Scheme (Logaston Press, 2019).

8. 8.  Helen Meller, ‘Urban Renewal and Citizenship: The Quality of Life in British Cities, 1890–1990’, Urban History 22, no. 1 (1995): 64, https://doi.org/10.1017/S096392680001138X.

9. 9.  Tom Hulme, After the Shock City: Urban Culture and the Making of Modern Citizenship (Boydell Press, 2019), 9.

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

11. 11.  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.

12. 12.  Tom Breen et al., ‘Whose Right to Roam? Contesting Access to England’s Countryside’, The Journal of Transport History, 44, no. 2 (2023): 276–307, https://doi.org/10.1177/00225266231174766.

13. 13.  Linda M. Ross et al., ‘Introduction’, in New Lives, New Landscapes Revisited: Rural Modernity in Britain, ed. Linda M. Ross et al. (British Academy, Oxford University Press, 2023), 8.

14. 14.  Katrina Navickas, ‘Building Amenity in Areas of Non-Outstanding Natural Beauty in the Southern Pennines’, in New Lives, New Landscapes Revisited: Rural Modernity in Britain, ed. Linda M. Ross et al. (British Academy, Oxford University Press, 2023), 112.

15. 15.  Kristin Bluemel, ‘Rural Modernity in Britain: Landscape, Literature, Nostalgia’ in New Lives, New Landscapes Revisited: Rural Modernity in Britain, ed. Linda M. Ross et al. (British Academy, Oxford University Press, 2023), 58.

16. 16.  Martin Johnes, Wales since 1939 (Manchester University Press, 2012), 214–16.

17. 17.  Linda M. Ross et al., eds., New Lives, New Landscapes Revisited: Rural Modernity in Britain (British Academy, Oxford University Press, 2023).

18. 18.  Tom Williamson, ‘Landscape: The Configured Space’, in History Beyond the Text: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources, ed. Sarah Barber and Corinna M. Peniston-Bird (Routledge, 2009), 136–54; W. G. Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape (Hodder and Stoughton, 1955).

19. 19.  Denis Cosgrove et al., ‘Landscape and Identity at Ladybower Reservoir and Rutland Water’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 21, no. 3 (1996): 534–51, https://doi.org/10.2307/622595.

20. 20.  Simon Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class: Ritual and Authority in the English Industrial City, 1840–1914 (Manchester University Press, 2004).

21. 21.  Brad Beaven, ‘The Provincial Press, Civic Ceremony and the Citizen-Soldier During the Boer War, 1899–1902: A Study of Local Patriotism’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 37, no. 2 (2009): 207–28, https://doi.org/10.1080/03086530903010350.

22. 22.  Tom Hulme, ‘Urban Materialities: Citizenship, Public Housing and Governance in Modern Britain’, in New Approaches to Governance and Rule in Urban Europe since 1500, ed. Simon Gunn and Tom Hulme (Routledge, 2020), 190–210; Peter Shapely, ‘Civic Pride and Redevelopment in the Post-War British City’, Urban History 39, no. 2 (2012): 310–28, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926812000077.

23. 23.  Andrea Gaynor, ‘Lawnscaping Perth: Water Supply, Gardens, and Scarcity, 1890–1925’, Journal of Urban History 46, no. 1 (2020): 63–78, https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144217692991.

24. 24.  Andrew M. Busch, ‘Dams and the Age of Abundance: Hydraulic Boosterism, Regional Growth, and the Reemergence of Water Scarcity in Central Texas’, Journal of Urban History 49, no. 2 (2023): 310, https://doi.org/10.1177/00961442211008865.

25. 25.  Busch, ‘Dams and the Age of Abundance’, 314.

26. 26.  Daniel Haines, ‘Development, Citizenship and the Bhakra–Nangal Dams in Postcolonial India, 1948–1952’, The Historical Journal 65, no. 4 (2022): 1124–44, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X21000625.

27. 27.  Lesley Tate, ‘Parking Charges Are Coming says Yorkshire Water – Even Though Its Yet to Get Council Approval’, Telegraph and Argus, 17 August 2022, https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/20668370.parking-charges-coming-says-yorkshire-water—even-though-yet-get-council-approval/.

28. 28.  Shane Ewen, ‘Socio-Technological Disasters and Engineering Expertise in Victorian Britain: The Holmfirth and Sheffield Floods of 1852 and 1864’, Journal of Historical Geography, 46 (2014): 15–20, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2014.05.021; Emily Godbey, ‘Disaster Tourism and the Melodrama of Authenticity: Revisiting the 1889 Johnstown Flood’, Pennsylvania History 73, no. 3 (2006): 273–315; Patty Wharton-Michael, ‘The Johnstown Flood of 1889: The Johnstown Tribune’s Commonsense Coverage vs. Common-Practice Sensationalism’, Journalism History 38, no. 1 (2012): 23–33, https://doi.org/10.1080/00947679.2012.12062869.

29. 29.  Malcolm Barker, ‘The Birth of a Reservoir … A Nightmare of Sound in the Quiet Valley’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 24 August 1962, 10; Maria Kaika, ‘Dams as Symbols of Modernization: The Urbanization of Nature Between Geographical Imagination and Materiality’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96, no. 2 (2006): 276, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2006.00478.x.

30. 30.  Special correspondent, ‘Leeds Afforestation: Its Bearing on the Water Supply’, Yorkshire Post, 11 January 1913, 10.

31. 31.  John Sheail has explored the writings of Thomas Woodhead, an ecologist who compiled a history of Huddersfield’s waterworks in 1939 that considered the ecological impact of the town’s water catchment area, arguing that ecology could provide the solutions to problems arising from waterworks schemes. See John Sheail, ‘T. W. Woodhead and the Study of Vegetation and Man in the Huddersfield District’, The Naturalist 113 (1988): 137, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/50376549; T. W. Woodhead, History of the Huddersfield Water Supplies (Tolson Memorial Museum, 1939), 123.

32. 32.  Maria Kaika, City of Flows: Modernity, Nature, and the City (Routledge, 2005), 14.

33. 33.  Matthew Gandy, Concrete and Clay: Remaking Nature in New York City (MIT Press, 2003), 93.

34. 34.  William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (Norton, 1991).

35. 35.  Martin V. Melosi, ‘Humans, Cities, and Nature: How Do Cities Fit in the Material World?’, Journal of Urban History 36, no. 1 (2010): 3–21, https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144209349876.

36. 36.  Mark Poynting and Erwan Rivault, ‘2023 Confirmed as World’s Hottest Year on Record’, BBC News, 9 January 2024, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67861954; Simon King, ‘Summer 2024 Was World’s Hottest on Record’, BBC News, 6 September 2024, https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/c93p5kz9elro.

37. 37.  Mark Sweney and Helena Horton, ‘Thames Water Reports Profits Boom Despite Surge in Burst Pipes During Drought’, Guardian, 5 December 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/05/thames-water-reports-profits-boom-despite-surge-in-burst-pipes-during-drought.

38. 38.  Anna Isaac et al., ‘Thames Water in Crisis Talks Over Potential £10bn Black Hole’, Guardian, 28 June 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/28/thames-water-in-crisis-talks-over-potential-10bn-black-hole-cost-possible-collapse.

39. 39.  Anna Issac, ‘Revealed: Thames Water Diverted “Cash for Clean-Ups” to Help Pay Bonuses’, Guardian, 23 December 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/dec/23/revealed-thames-water-diverted-cash-for-clean-ups-to-help-pay-bonuses.

40. 40.  ‘Plans for Three New Reservoirs Move a Step Closer’, Ofwat, 30 March 2023, https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/plans-for-three-new-reservoirs-move-a-step-closer/.

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