Description
The provision of public water supplies for the Halifax district was of great concern in the second half of the 19th century. As the town grew and the population increased the Victoria Reservoir created in 1848 in Gibbet Lane proved inadequate to the demand. The Corporation were forced to look further afield for their supplies, to the peat moors to the north and west of Halifax. Reservoirs at Ogden, Walshaw Dean, Fly Flatts and Widdop date from this period. Widdop was constructed between 1872 and 1878 by the architect and engineer Edward Bateman, honoured with the name of ‘La Trobe’ after the Moravian engineer, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who was responsible for some of the first piped water supplies in America. Bateman was the only British engineer to be invited to attend the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 where he was much taken with Egyptian architecture - as can be seen from the valve tower he built at the south-east corner of Widdop reservoir.
Text from: Calderdale Architecture and History