A Walk In The Past
“My experience as a Bradford Historian has helped me piece together the history of the water supply from source, the rivers Nidd and Stone in North Yorkshire to the City of Bradford in West Yorkshire.
My Hobby as a historian is to make sure that we never forget others in the past have sacrificed for us.
One Thousand And Two Hundred And Fifty Men, Women and Children lived, worked and some even died in the construction of these reservoirs.
It is up to us all to remember and respect our heritage. It is very easy to turn on the tap for a drink of water and have no idea how it actually got there in the first place”. – Andrew C Bolt.
Here is a link to a short video that gives you a taste of the subject.
Hi Andrew, I wondered if you could help me, I am researching whether Bradford water supply was contaminated with lead from the opening of Nidd aqueduct up until 1930 when My father was born at Queensbury, I have read that the tunnel intersected and drained a lot of Greenhow mine workings then went through 13 lead veins on its way to Wharfedale. As the water would originally be soft coming of upper Nidderdale sand/Gritstone it seems to have gone through enough limestone to make it hard as I always remember my Granny washing her hair in rainwater as she hated the hard tap water, I wonder if it picked up lead as well, I have tried to find mention of lead in the supply but can’t find anything except mention of lead from pipework to individual houses, I did find a website that basically said there is no problem with any main water supplies in UK so don’t look here, if you could please tell me where I might look as I believe it must have been or be contaminated at some level,
Hi Noel,
Lead in the water, what a great question….hence why at the end of the aqueduct we have the Chellow heights treatment works. I’m not sure if lead was a problem or extracted in any way, your right about service pipes. Some do still remain, but there’s a program of work to identify and remove them. The waters colour was recorded by looking at the public baths on Thornton Road, looking at the haven chart. I believe it was pretty good from some of the written reports.