Out & About …

… on the North York Moors, or wherever I happen to be.

Cod Beck Reservoir

The head of the reservoir in the Sheep Wash valley captures the low-lying November sun.

Cod Beck Reservoir was opened in 1953 for the Northallerton and District Water Board, but one had actually been mooted in the 19th-century as part of a proposed scheme by the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees. In the Parliamentary session for 18691‘Multiple Classified ads’ (1868) York Herald, 21 Nov, [1]+, available: https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/apps/doc/R3215280166/GDCS?u=ed_itw&sid=bookmark-GDCS&xid=4c6708c0 [accessed 16 Jul 2021]., the borough had applied for an Act for a scheme including a reservoir which:

will be bounded on the southward by an embankment or dam to be formed across the stream called Cod Beck, 250 yards or thereabouts above the Linen Mill, called High Mill, and will extend thence to a point on the Cod Beck where it passes from the enclosed lands on to the moor or common lands, at the distance of four furlongs and seven chains, or thereabouts (measuring along Cod Beck), in a northerly direction from the point on Cod Beck at which the embankment or dam is to be formed as aforesaid, and the Reservoir will be of the width of 170 yards or thereabouts at the said embankment or dam and for about one half of its length, and its remaining portion will diminish to a width of 40 yards or thereabouts.

High Mill is now the hostel. Four furlongs and seven chains is just under a kilometre, so I think Stockton’s reservoir would have been about half the size of the current one.

The scheme also proposed a conduit to carry the water to Stockton’s Two Mile Houses Reservoir at Norton , passing through the parishes of Osmotherly, Thimbleby, Ellerbeck, Mount Grace, West Harlsey, East Harlsey, Ingleby Arncliffe, West Rountoun, East Rounton, Potto, Whorlton, Hutton-juxto-Rudby, Crathorne, Kirk Levington, High Worsall, Yarm, Egglescliffe, Long Newton, Coatham Stob, Preston-upon-Tees, Elton, East Heartburn, Stockton-upon-Tees, and Norton.

  • 1
    ‘Multiple Classified ads’ (1868) York Herald, 21 Nov, [1]+, available: https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/apps/doc/R3215280166/GDCS?u=ed_itw&sid=bookmark-GDCS&xid=4c6708c0 [accessed 16 Jul 2021].

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