Sheffield's 'Great Flood'

By the mid-1800s, Sheffield was firmly in the grip of the Industrial Revolution. An increasing number of people were moving into the area to take advantage of the employment prospects in the giant, pioneering steel works, and the town was generally expanding. There was a growing, desperate, need for a continuous, and greatly improved, water supply; and increasing pressure was being applied to the Sheffield Waterworks Company to undertake whatever developments were necessary.

The company had established itself in 1830, and now, in response to the pressure, devised the ambitious 'Bradfield Scheme': a plan to built four large reservoirs in the hills surrounding Bradfield, about eight miles north west of Sheffield. The first was to be the giant (by those days' standards) Dale Dyke dam, and construction work commenced on 1 January 1859.

Between 1859 and 1864, work continued on the dam, and by late February 1864, only a few finishing touches were required to complete the embankment. (Work on the second dam, the Agden, had already commenced.) The reservoir was now almost full, the water level being just a few feet below the overflow weir.

On Friday 11 March 1864, at around 5.30pm, one of the 'navvies', William Horsefield, who had been working on the dam, was crossing the embankment on his way home after finishing work. The weather was quite stormy, as it had been for most of the day, so he crossed a little way down the embankment slope to avoid the heavy winds, and the spray that was being whipped over the top of the dam.

A little way along, he noticed a crack running across the embankment. The 'crack' was only wide enough to enter his fingers, but it was of such a length as to cause him some alarm. He immediately scurried off to inform some of his work colleagues, and the Waterworks Company's chief engineer, John Gunson, was sent for.

Gunson, who lived next door to the company's offices in Division Street, near Sheffield city centre, some eight miles away, collected one of his contractors, John Craven. It was around 10pm when they eventually arrived at the dam.

After an initial inspection, Gunson concluded that the crevice was merely a surface crack probably brought about by frost damage, or slight settlement of the new embankment. But to be on the safe side he decided to lower the water in the reservoir until such time as a more extensive investigation could be carried out.

He discovered that the navvies had already opened the drain valves in an attempt to achieve this. But it was evident that this method would take several days to lower the water to a 'safe' level, so he instructed them to place some gunpowder, and blow a hole in the side of the by-wash, thus quickly draining off a large amount of water. Several attempts were made with the gunpowder, but the rain and persistent spray thrown up by the increasing winds prevented its ignition.

By now it was 11.30pm and water was being liberally blown over the top of the dam. Gunson made his way back across the embankment to inspect the crack once more. It did not appear to have worsened, but as he glanced up to the top of the dam he was shocked to see 'water running over like a white sheet in the darkness'. He later declared that it went 'right under my feet and dropped down the crack'.

Gunson edged his way down to the valve house, located near the bottom of the embankment, to see if he could get some idea of the quantity of water passing over, which initially was 'no great current'. As he arrived, though, one of his colleagues, suspecting something was seriously wrong, called down to him to 'get out of the way'.

Gunson looked up to see a breach appearing in the top of the dam. Feeling a sudden, violent, vibrating of the ground beneath his feet, he quickly scampered up the side of the embankment luckily just in time, as a few seconds later there was a total collapse of a large section of the dam, unleashing a colossal mountain of water, which thundered down the valley and on to the unsuspecting population below. Six hundred and fifty million gallons of water roared down the Loxley valley and into Sheffield, wreaking death and destruction on a horrific scale.

Individual experiences of the disaster were infinitely tragic, pathetic, and sometimes bizarre. The first to drown was a two-day-old baby boy, the oldest a woman of 87. Whole families were wiped out.

One desperate man, trapped upstairs in a terrace house, battered his way through five party walls to safety collecting thirty-four other people as he went. A would-be suicide, locked in a cell, decided, as the flood poured in, that he no longer wished to die. One poor old man drowned alongside his sleeping companion – a donkey. A husband put his wife and five children on a bed on which they floated until the water went down.

After about 30 minutes the flood gradually subsided, leaving a trail of destruction more than eight miles long: it was later described as 'looking like a battlefield'. In addition to the massive loss of life (250 dead), total or partial destruction occurred to 415 dwelling houses, 106 factories and shops, 64 other buildings, 20 bridges and 4,478 cottage or market gardens.

With thanks to Michael Armitage, whose website The Great Flood at Sheffield 1864 contains a downloadable version of 'A Complete History of The Great Flood at Sheffield' by Samuel Harrison, first published in 1864, together with his own account of the flood and its causes, a photo gallery, maps, bibliography, links to other websites and an online memorial to the victims.

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