Restoring the River Brent to its former glory - local volunteers at work

 

Volunteers have been working with the charity Thames21 to restore the habitats of the River Brent which flows through the borough from the Welsh Harp to the North Circular.

This video is a fitting tribute to their dedication and their vision.

The Welsh Harp Reservoir Story – Part 4

Fourth of the guest series by local historian Philip Grant

The Welsh Harp Reservoir Story – Part 4

Thank you for joining me again, as we sail towards the finishing line of our local reservoir’s story. If you missed Part 3, you will find it here.

1. A sailing race on the Welsh Harp Reservoir, 2011.

Sailing became an important use of the Welsh Harp in the years after the Second World War. Several large companies, such as Handley Page and Smiths Industries from Cricklewood, set up their own sailing clubs for employees. Others were local organisations, such as the Wembley Sailing Club (formed in 1953) and the Sea Cadets. The various clubs have since come together under an umbrella organisation, the Welsh Harp Sailing Association, based at Birchen Grove, which leases the reservoir for all water-based sports and leisure activities.

2. Sir Frederick Handley Page (left) at a dinghy naming ceremony for his company's sailing club, c. 1954.
    (Photo courtesy of the Handley Page Association)

The reservoir had come into public ownership in 1948, as part of the post-war Labour Government’s nationalisation of transport industries, which eventually saw it managed by the British Waterways Board. Under another environmental innovation from that time, the reservoir and its shoreline were made a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1950, particularly for their importance to rare bird species, but also for the plant life at the water’s edge.

Most of the land around the Welsh Harp was still in a mixture of private and local authority ownership. I mentioned in Part 3 that Willesden Urban District Council had purchased 40 acres of land on the north side in 1928. We saw in the articles on Church End and Chapel End that Willesden had opened a new cemetery in 1893, but because of the district’s large population, this was already filling up. It planned to put a cemetery here, but Kingsbury Council objected, saying that it wanted the area used for housing. After a public inquiry, the Government agreed to loan Willesden the money for a cemetery, but said it must sell Kingsbury 14 acres nearest to the reservoir for recreational use. This later became the Welsh Harp Open Space.

3. Willesden's 1950 plans for its Kingsbury Lawn Cemetery, and Garden of Rest. (From the National Archive)

After Kingsbury merged with Wembley in 1934, Willesden’s plans were further delayed, as the new council tried to buy the land from it, for its own cemetery needs. The only thing that the two councils managed to agree on, when war came in 1939, was that they could both use what is now the Birchen Grove allotments site for mass civilian burials, if the need arose (thankfully, it didn’t!). Under the new post-war planning regulations, Willesden applied again in 1950 to use their land as a burial ground. Approval was eventually given and their Kingsbury Lawn Cemetery was consecrated in 1954, with the superintendent’s house and chapel built by 1956. Despite this, the ornamental gates at the top of Birchen Grove have never welcomed a funeral! 

 

4. Sculling finalists and the British eight at the Women’s European Rowing Championships, 1960.
    (Source: Brent Archives – Willesden Chronicle photographers’ negatives)

On some websites, you will read that the Welsh Harp was the venue for the rowing events at the 1948 London Olympic Games. That’s incorrect (in fact, they were held at Henley, on the River Thames), but the reservoir did host the 1960 Women’s European Rowing Championships (“click” for a detailed article on these). That event was organised by Willesden Borough Council, and the competitors were accommodated at the then recently opened John Kelly Girls School (now part of Crest Academy), just up Dollis Hill from Neasden Recreation Ground.

5. Brent Regatta ad. from 1966, and the 1969 inter-Council rowing race. (Brent Archives online image 9787)

The Council had run a Whit Monday Willesden Regatta on the reservoir for many years, and this continued as the Brent Regatta after it merged with Wembley in 1965. One of the highlights for the crowds was watching teams of local councillors from a number of London Boroughs taking part in rowing race over a 500-metre course. The photo above shows the Brent boat winning the 1969 race – I wonder who would be in the crew if the race was still held today (any nominations?). This annual bank holiday regatta ended in the early 1970s.

 

 6. Two views of activities at the Youth Sailing Base. (Images from Brent Archives)

It was not just adults who could enjoy water sports on the Welsh Harp. In 1964, the year before it was disbanded, Middlesex County Council opened a Youth Sailing Base on the northern arm of the reservoir, where thousands of young people learned to sail or canoe safely. Another important facility for local youngsters came in 1973, when Brent Council opened the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre (“WHEEC”) on part of the proposed cemetery site. A large nursery, to grow plants for Brent’s Parks Service, also opened on the site in 1977.

 

 7. The 1956 cemetery chapel building, later used by the WHEEC and (here in 2011) by Energy Solutions.

The importance of the Welsh Harp for nesting water birds had long attracted ornithologists to the area. When proposals for a marina, close to a key nesting area near the Welsh Harp public house, were put forward in the early 1970s, a number of them came together to oppose this. The Welsh Harp Conservation Group was formed in 1972, and their volunteer members have helped to look after the habitats on and around the reservoir ever since (in a similar way to the Barn Hill Conservation Group, featured in my Fryent Country Park Story).

 8. Welsh Harp Conservation Group volunteers at work, winter 2008 and summer 2011. (L. by Roy Beddard)

As well as looking after nesting rafts and bird hides, and the wider vegetation of the area to encourage wildlife of all sorts, the group has played an important part in recording the natural history of the reservoir, and sharing this with visitors. From a first guided walk on a bank holiday in 1976, they expanded this to provide monthly wildlife walks. When my children were young (in the late 1980s or early 1990s) our family benefitted from one of these walks. For the first time in my life I got to see beautiful Great Crested Grebes, an unforgettable sight!

 

9. Great Crested Grebes, courting and nesting on the Welsh Harp. (Photos by Roy Beddard and Leo Batten)

While there was relative peace and quiet for the bird nesting grounds at the eastern end of the reservoir, there were major developments taking place not far away, at Staples Corner. The narrow roadway under the Victorian railway viaduct was causing major traffic problems on the North Circular Road, especially when it was planned to start the M1 motorway from here. A massive Brent Cross flyover was built in the 1960s, to carry east-west through-traffic over the top of this bottleneck. You can see this in the photo below, and I have added part of a 1921 image to help show the line of the viaduct, which you can just see in the modern picture.

 

 

 10. Staples Corner, with North Circular Road flyover and the railway viaduct (including 1921 comparison).

You may be wondering what happened to the Welsh Harp public house, which featured in Part 2 of this story. It had been replaced by a more modern building in the 1930s (the fate of a number of historic inns in our area), but it fell victim to more roadworks when the north-south A5 flyover was built over Staples Corner in the 1970s. It was demolished in 1971, and its site was where the north-bound slip road, from Staples Corner towards West Hendon, passes the entrance to Priestley Way, a service road for a small industrial estate. What a sad epitaph for the inn which gave the Brent Reservoir its more popular name!

11. The 1930s Welsh Harp public house in 1971, and the site as it is now. (1971 photo by Geoffrey Hewlett)

Going back to the reservoir, this does have to be drained occasionally, both for major maintenance work on the dam and to remove the rubbish which unfortunately gets dumped in it. One remarkable feature when this happens is that the original winding course of the River Brent can still be seen, just as it was when it marked the boundary between Kingsbury and Hendon parishes to the north, and Willesden parish to the south, when the land was first flooded to create the reservoir in 1835.

 

12. The River Brent flowing through the drained reservoir in 1974. (Photo by Leo Batten)

In 2012, responsibility for the reservoir was passed to the Canal and River Trust, a charity set up when the Government abolished the publicly-owned British Waterways Board. Questions were raised about how safe the reservoir might be in the event of a severe storm, after a similar Canal Age dam at Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire was in danger of collapse in 2019. Luckily, it emerged that as well as regular checks, further reinforcement of the dam with concrete had been carried out in 2005-07, following detailed studies of how extreme heavy rainfall might affect the Welsh Harp reservoir, and the river downstream of it. Brent Council also issued a statement following the Toddbrook Reservoir emergency, with links to information for anyone who feels the need for reassurance.

Earlier, I mentioned facilities that had been set up for young people near the reservoir. Sadly, Barnet Council closed the Youth Sailing Base, which they inherited from Middlesex County Council, in 2004, and sold off its site to a developer for building luxury waterside apartments. Instructors from the Base went on to set up the Phoenix Canoe Club, so that there is still a place on the Welsh Harp where youngsters can enjoy this sport.

13. Pond dipping at the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre. (Photo courtesy of Harry Mackie)

The Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre went from strength to strength. Back in the 1980s, my daughters were among the thousands of local school children each year who have enjoyed learning about nature in a hands-on way, from enthusiastic experts. But the squeeze on local authority spending has also hit the former cemetery site. By the 1990s, Brent Council had closed its Parks Department nursery, which later reopened as the private Greenhouse (now Birchen Grove) Garden Centre. 

During the past ten years, cuts to funds allocated to youth services first saw the WHEEC receive financial support from the Careys construction group, then its threat of closure. Luckily this environmental “jewel in the crown”, celebrated in a 2015 Council video, was saved when Brent passed the Centre to the Thames 21 charity, under a Community Asset Transfer in 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you have enjoyed discovering more about “the Welsh Harp” in this series of articles. With all Brent’s Libraries now open again (with restricted hours), you can find even more information and pictures in Geoffrey Hewlett’s 2011 book, “Welsh Harp Reservoir Through Time”, in the local history section at ref. 942.185. 

14. The reservoir in 2010, and the cover of Geoffrey Hewlett's book. (Photo: London Canal Museum)

But it’s also a place to visit and enjoy, on our doorstep, if you can do so safely, whether for a walk, some wildlife watching or perhaps to learn to sail or paddle a canoe. After all, it is (officially) the Brent Reservoir!

Philip Grant

Next weekend we’ll take the No.32 northbound from the Priestley Way bus stop (by the site of the Welsh Harp Inn) for a one-off special article, then ride the same bus route southbound for a new local history series. Hop aboard “Wembley Matters” to find out where these journeys will take us.

Brilliant work on River Brent off Blackbird Hill by Thames21 and volunteers

 

Some of the volunteers

The walk through the urban orchard and St David's Open Space and along the River Thames appears on my Green Walk (see side panel) and is a great off the road route from Blackbird Hill  (Quainton Open Space) to Wembley Park Station.

If we want to reduce car trips to schools it is a good route for young children accompanied by parents or independent older pupils. I was using the route the other day to get from Chalkhill School to Birchen Grove allotments and notice two extensive heaps of rubbish that had been collected in a Thames21 cleanup of the area which is part of an ongoing project.

The route of the river can be seen in the line of trees below.  The river disappears under the railway line to re-emerge behind Wembley Stadium where there is another walking route to Stonebridge.

Brent Rivers and Communities Project Officer, Carolina Pinto, sent this report of the clean up day:

Last Saturday volunteers arrived on time, and the event started at 10.30am with a safety talk and instructions.

It is worth mentioning the important participation of our partners Ashford Place. We also counted with the presence of a representative from Extinction Rebellion Brent.

Everyone geared up, the group was divided to either litter pick or help to clean some duckweed from the pond. *Duckweeds are small, free-floating aquatic perennials that combine to form a green 'carpet' on the surface of the water. At Quainton we saw a thick mat covering the surface of the water, hard to remove, therefore a task to be continued.

During the break, we had surprise. The singer Maria Costa performed a song called the ‘River Brent’, a song she composed last year for the volunteers that joined forces in this initiative, to help the river Brent.

The result from litter picking: 40 full black bags of litter, a baby buggy, and a few other items.

Most volunteers mentioned coming back to the next events.

The next steps of the Brent Rivers and Communities project are to improve the park area (informal paths and more vegetation management now that the bird nesting season is coming to an end), and to start the river restoration activities- pre-booked for the beginning of October.

Come join us in the next events that will happen on Saturday 19^th September 2020 (Please remember to book in advance).

Carolina.Pinto@thames21.org.uk

The Brent is YOUR river. Help restore it this Saturday. Numbers limited.

From  Thames 21

 Our next event at Quainton will be on Sat the 29^th August. See poster above, please remember that we are limiting the number of participants to make it safe for everyone, so please book in advance.

This time the plan is to continue cleaning up the river and the banks to remove as much litter as we can before we continue the vegetation management and river restoration works (after the end of the bird nesting season and all the permits are in place).

The river restoration part of the project is planned for the coming months (Sept/Oct/Nov/Dec 2020), please prepare as we need your help to restore the natural processes of this section of the River Brent for people and wildlife. See a summary of the restoration plan above.

In addition, we would like to invite you to join our citizen science monitoring program. We are continuing to recruit volunteers interested in learning new skills and in monitoring various aspects of the river Brent: water quality, physical habitat, aquatic biota, or to take fixed point photographs to help us evaluate the river’s health (both before and after restoration). Let me know if you are interested and I can send you more information on training, monitoring frequency, dates, etc..

caroline.pinto@thames21.org.uk

The Welsh Harp Reservoir Story – Part 1

A new local history series from Philip Grant. 

If you were standing in Kingsbury around 20,000 years ago, you probably would have had cold feet! The area was just at the southern edge of the ice sheets that covered much of Britain during the last Ice Age. The glaciers had left a covering of gravel over the underlying clay, and as they receded, the melt-water formed rivers that flowed south into the Thames. Over the centuries, they cut valleys into the landscape. Two small rivers, the Dollis Brook and Silk Stream, combined to form the River Brent, and that is where our story begins.

1. Looking across the reservoir towards West Hendon, c.2010.

Although some of this series is based on my own research, I could not have written it without the knowledge I gained from my friend and fellow local historian, Geoffrey Hewlett, who sadly died last year. I assisted him, mainly on the illustrations side, with his 2011 book “Welsh Harp Reservoir Through Time”. I learned so much of interest from him about this beautiful area, at the heart of our borough, that I want to share with you during this difficult Covid-19 period. 

We don’t know when people first lived in this part of Brent, but they were definitely here by the late Bronze Age (around 1,000 to 600BC). There are old records of pottery funeral urns, dated by archaeologists to the Deveral Rimbury period, being uncovered during work near the edge of the reservoir. Unfortunately, these have disappeared, and the exact location of the find was not recorded. Geoffrey worked at Brent Council, and when he was asked to suggest a “historical” name for a new road near the reservoir, off of Birchen Grove, he wrote down Rimbury. A typist misread his joined-up writing, so Runbury Circle commemorates the find!

2. C.3rd/4th Oxfordshire red-slipped ware pieces, from Blackbird Farm, 2013. (Archaeology South East)

Moving on into the Iron Age, farmers from Celtic tribes (originally from Central Europe) came to the area, and the Brent is thought to have got its name from their goddess, Brigantia. The Celts were pushed further west by later immigrants, and the next hard evidence we have of people living here is of farms during the Roman period, on the more easily cultivated gravel soils at the top of Dollis Hill and Blackbird Hill. Finds of 3^rd/4^th century Roman pottery have been dug up at both sites, as well as a Roman coin of Constantius II (337-361) in the reservoir.

3. The River Brent valley between Kingsbury and Dollis Hill on the 1745 Rocque map. (Brent Archives)

I covered much of the Kingsbury area’s agricultural history in The Fryent Country Park Story, so I will jump forward to the 18^th century, and developments which would lead to “the Welsh Harp” being created. Britain’s “Industrial Revolution” had begun, with the need for much greater quantities of raw materials and manufactured goods to be moved about. Roads were in a poor state, and a horse could pull much more weight in a boat than on a cart (as well as more safely for fragile items like Staffordshire pottery). It was time for canals.

Many shorter canals had been built since the 1760s, but it was the Grand Junction Canal, from the Midlands to the Thames at Brentford, that provided the main link to London. Even while this was being built (1793-1800), an Act of Parliament in 1795, allowed the construction of a branch from it direct to Paddington, on the outskirts of London itself. A new brickworks at Alperton, using suitable clay from a local field, provided bricks for some of the bridges required, and the branch canal opened to the Paddington Basin in 1801.

 4. The opening of the canal branch to Paddington Basin, 1801. (Image from the London Metropolitan Archive)

Canals need to be topped up with water, and this was especially the case after the canal company started supplying piped water (pumped straight from the Basin!) to homes in the rapidly developing Paddington suburb. The River Brent was soon identified as a likely source, and although a reservoir was considered, the cheaper option of a “feeder” was constructed in 1810/11. This ran from a bend in the river at Kingsbury, through the parish of Willesden, to the canal at Lower Place. You can see its course on a map from that time, and it is still there today. 

5. The Feeder, in light blue, on an 1816 map of Willesden, and by Johnson Road, Stonebridge, c.2010.

Water supply again became a problem when the Regent’s Canal was opened in 1820, joining the Grand Junction branch at what is now known as Little Venice. A drought in 1833 gave the final push to plans for a 61-acre reservoir at Kingsbury, and by late 1834 the canal company had accepted a tender from William Hoof, to build the dam and associated works for the sum of £2,747 (and six shillings!). 

 6. Hoof's letter to the Regent's Canal Co. of October 1834, agreeing terms for constructing the reservoir.

Work on the reservoir’s construction must have been carried out quickly, because a plaque inside Old St Andrew’s Church, Kingsbury, records the deaths of four Sidebottom brothers ‘who were drowned in the reservoir near this church on the 14^th of August 1835’. The inquest found that Alexander, William and Edward accidentally drowned while bathing, and that Charles died ‘while attempting to save the lives of his three brothers’ - a tragic start to the reservoir’s story.

7. The Sidebottom brothers’ memorial in Old St. Andrew's Church, Kingsbury.

Even before the original work was finished, the canal company was buying more land, so that the dam could be raised and the reservoir extended. Their haste was to have severe consequences. The winter of 1840/41 was so cold that the ground was frozen to a depth of 20-30cm. The six days from 10 to 15 January saw heavy snow and rain, and water was seen overflowing the reservoir’s dam via a “waste weir”. On 16 January there was a rapid thaw, and at around midnight a fracture occurred in the dam wall.

There was already some flooding at Brentford, where the Grand Junction Canal and River Brent met the Thames, but just before 4am on Sunday 17 January 1841 ‘a great body of water’ hit the town, lifting boats out of the canal, which then caused damage to other boats and property as they were flung about by the flood. Three men died, and around twenty barges and their cargos were destroyed or seriously damaged.

 8. A February 1841 newspaper illustration, depicting the flood at Brentford (with some artistic licence!).

Records of the inquest on William Spruce, a 19-year old “barge boy”, show the lengths the coroner went to in order to establish the cause of the flood, and reason for his death. A surveyor representing the Regent’s Canal Company said that the Kingsbury dam ‘was of a proper strength’, and claimed that the water which escaped because of the fracture would not have reached Brentford before 5am, so could not have been responsible. The jurors decided that it was flood water from the reservoir that caused Spruce’s death. The canal company’s directors ordered urgent strengthening of the dam, but continued to resist any claims for compensation!

9. A season ticket for fishing on the reservoir in 1846.

The rebuilding of the dam was completed by early 1843, and a cottage was built near the Kingsbury end of it for a keeper. He would control the flow of any excess water from the reservoir, using sluice gates above the new waste weir, reached along a wooden walkway above the dam. After this, the Brent or Kingsbury Reservoir (both names appear to have been used) settled down to a few quiet years, when fishing and birdwatching were enjoyed there.

10. An 1850 watercolour: 'Reservoir of the Brent, Kingsbury, Middlesex.’ (Brent Archives online image 1710)

Water supply for both the Regent’s Canal from the docks at Limehouse, and the branch through Alperton and Willesden, soon became a problem again. In 1851, Parliament passed an Act allowing them to increase the height of the dam and create a much larger reservoir. More land was purchased, including a public house just north of the Brent Bridge on the Edgware Road. Its tenant was removed, and an embankment had to be built, to protect the pub from flooding.

11. A Regent's Canal Company boundary post from 1854, near the reservoir. (Photo by the late Len Snow)

New boundary posts (bearing the Prince of Wales crest of the former Prince Regent, later King George IV) were put in place around the company’s land, and by 1854 the reservoir had been filled to cover around 400 acres. As the former meadows became flooded, and the habitat changed, the bird life around the reservoir was studied by two keen naturalists living in Kingsbury, Frederick Bond and James Harting. The latter’s 1866 book, “Birds of Middlesex” has a wonderful frontispiece showing the reservoir.

12. The frontispiece to Harting's 1866 book "Birds of Middlesex". (From an original copy at Brent Archives)

Around 1858, a new tenant took over the public house near Brent Bridge, and we will look at his part in the reservoir’s story next weekend. I hope you will join me then.

Philip Grant.

UPDATED WITH COMMENTS The Welsh Harp Reservoir – a warning from Whaley Bridge

Guest post by Philip Grant

The Welsh Harp Reservoir – a warning from Whaley Bridge

We know that Global Warming is causing more frequent extreme weather conditions, such as record heat waves in summer, and more intense storms. In the past few days, we have been watching (from a safe distance) the news about a threatened dam collapse at Whaley Bridge, caused by the volume of water flowing into the reservoir above the town after prolonged torrential rain. I don’t want to cause alarm, but this should be a wake-up call about a reservoir much closer to us.

The Toddbrook Reservoir in Derbyshire was built in the 1830’s, to supply water along a “feeder” to the High Peak Canal. The embankment dam was constructed of earth, around a central core of puddled clay. 

The Kingsbury, or Brent, Reservoir (now better known as the Welsh Harp) was built in 1834/35, to supply water along The Feeder (which still runs through Neasden and Stonebridge) to the Paddington Branch of the Grand Junction Canal. Its dam, using the same method of construction, was the work of a Hammersmith contractor, William Hoof. The price for the work, which he agreed with the Regent’s Canal Company, was £2,747 and six shillings!

William Hoof’s letter of 18^th October 1834, agreeing to build the reservoir and embankment dam at Kingsbury.

            

Heavy rain, and a rapid thaw of snow, caused a partial collapse of the dam in January 1841. 

A newspaper illustration of the flooding in Brentford, 1841.

The water swept down the Brent valley, which was then just open farmland, and caused major flood damage at the canal port of Brentford, where the river met the Thames. Several people were drowned, and more than 100 boats were wrecked.

The dam had been repaired by 1843, and was enlarged ten years later as the Regent’s Canal Company needed more water for its operations. A spillway was added to the dam, allowing excess water to escape into the river below when the reservoir was full. By late Victorian times, this had become a tourist attraction for people visiting the local countryside from the crowded city.

The Kingsbury “waterfall”, in a postcard from c.1900.  [Brent Archives online image 1341]

The land downstream of the reservoir remained as farmland until 1880, when the Metropolitan Railway built a large engineering works at Neasden, on the line they were building out from Baker Street. They also had to build homes for the many people needed to run the works, and the first 100 houses in “A” and “B” (now Quainton and Verney) Streets were occupied by 1882. If you want to learn more about Neasden’s Railway Village, there is an illustrated article on the Brent Archives website LINK .

Across Neasden Lane (North), suburban development in the 1930’s saw new roads such as Braemar Avenue built right up to the foot of the dam, and a new junior school, Wykeham Primary in Aboyne Road, to serve the area’s growing population. Two more schools, Neasden High and St. Margaret Clitherow R.C. Primary, were built in the early 1970’s, on the site of the former Neasden Power Station, between the River Brent and The Feeder. When the High School closed, as part of Brent’s cull of secondary schools in 1989, its site was redeveloped as the Quainton Village housing scheme.

More housing developments were built near the reservoir in the late 20^th century. Runbury Circle nestles under the north-west edge of the dam, while Harp Island Close lies between the river and The Feeder, near to where the Brent emerges below the dam. This estate of 128 flats was built by Laings in the 1980’s, and the view here is from its gardens (in 2009).

What had been the dam’s Victorian spillway was replaced in 1936 by five siphons, designed to take water out of the reservoir if its level becomes too high. These were installed as a safety measure, under changes introduced by the Reservoir (Safety Provisions) Act in 1930. That law was introduced after 16 people were drowned in Dolgarrog, North Wales, in 1925, when floods coming down a valley in the hills caused an embankment dam above the village to collapse.

Toddbrook Reservoir had been inspected, both by its owners and an independent engineer, under the provisions of the current (1975!) Reservoirs Act, as recently as November 2018, and found to be “safe”. In the light of the near collapse of its dam, less than nine months later, and what we know about more extreme weather events, as a result of Global Warming, we need to think again about the safety of all of the country’s Canal Age dams, including the one at the Welsh Harp.

Brent Council needs to work with the Canal and River Trust, and the Environment Agency, to review all aspects of our local dam’s safety, both to minimise the risk of a similar event to Whaley Bridge happening here, and to ensure that plans are in place on how any such emergency would be dealt with. 

If a similar spell of very wet weather hit North West London, as it did North West England last week, the wide catchment areas of the Dollis Brook / River Brent and the Silk Stream would bring huge volumes of water into the Welsh Harp. Not only the safety of the dam structure in such conditions needs to be properly assessed, but also the ability of the siphons to cope with such volumes.

If the reservoir had to shed large volumes of water, could the river below the dam take that water away safely, without flooding low lying residential areas and roads for several miles downstream. There have been times, in living memory, when debris restricting the culvert which channels the river under the Harrow Road has caused flooding in the Monks Park and St Raphael’s Estate areas.

Are Brent’s own maps of areas at risk from flooding, if there were to be a partial (or worse) failure of the dam up to date? Does the Council know how many people currently live, work or go to school in these areas, and how it would manage their evacuation if there were to be an emergency of the type experienced at Whaley Bridge. The recent events there have been a warning which must not be ignored.

Despite this warning, the Welsh Harp Reservoir is still a place to be treasured and enjoyed, rather than to be feared, as long as its potential dangers are properly considered, and the necessary action taken. If you want to discover more about its history there is an article online LINK t, or for more of its fascinating story, beautifully illustrated, borrow a copy of Geoffrey Hewlett’s “Welsh Harp Reservoir Through Time” from one of Brent’s libraries. Better still, take a stroll beside it yourself!

Philip Grant.

Note from Editor:  I am awaiting a response from the Canals and River Trust to a request made for a comment on the above piece.

Carolyn Downs, Brent Council CEO, has sent thos response to Philip Grant:

Dear Mr Grant,

Thank you for your email and attachment, on behalf of Carolyn Downs I acknowledge receipt.

Please be assured that the matter is being discussed by the relevant teams internally and we will seek to engage with the relevant external partners on this to provide you with a further response.

In the meantime, the council’s Flood Risk Management Strategy is publically available on the website*.

Kind regards,

Tom Welsh
Head of the Chief Executive’s Office'

* THIS IS A LINK TO BRENT'S FLOOD RISK MANAGEMENT STRATEGY document:

https://www.brent.gov.uk/media/16406897/flood-risk-strategy-sept-2015.pdf

Roger Wilson has sent in this comment:

Phil, I support your proposal to Brent Council that it take heed of the 'warning from Whaley Bridge' and review its emergency flood planning and the maintenance schedules of the Welsh Harp/ Brent reservoir Dam Wall and spillways have not slipped.

But as a regular user of this leisure facility, both as a sailor and for the enjoyment its wildlife, I'd be more than upset to see an overly cautious kneejerk response to your blog, such as dropping water levels in the reservoir. Your Blog would be a more worthy if it reported some of the some of the measures that HAVE been carried out in the more recent past along side the sensationalist historic events of the past.

So to redress the balance ...

A quick online search 'Brent Reservoir repairs/ upgrades' reveals that:

i) that the spillway was redesigned in the 1930's (at the same time as the expansion of Housing below the reservoir) and is of a more sophisticated design than that of Toddbrook Reservoir impacting Whaley Bridge.

ii) That Brent's residents are fortunate that the Brent reservoir Dam and Brent River rainfall catchment basin have been the subject of a number of academic specific case studies (published between 1990 and 2000. These case studies included reviews of mathematical modelling methods used to predict floods, and of the capacity and design of the of the Brent Reservoir spillways to safely disperse flood water.

iii) Possibly as a result of these studies, between 2005 and 2007, e.g. only 12 years ago, the height of the Brent reservoir Dam Wall was raised with a new Concrete Cap and earth bunds and concrete walls added to the north and south side of the Dam wall. This I believe was to meet revised estimates of flood water levels in the event of a 1 in 10,000 year extreme rainfall.

Yes Brent Council , the Canal and Riverboat Trust who manage the reservoir , and the Environment Agency should review, publicly report and act on any short comings in their Flood prevention and Emergency planning provisions but in the meantime I hope this response lets anyone concerned sleep a little more easily in their bed!

Roger Wilson