The story of the syphon tunnel.

hello my name is martin and welcome back to another video we're up in the hills again on the malls saddle worth more we're out um and we're with darren from adventure me all right we've got the bar here as well so it's on today no no jeans no jeans all right he's he's catering by the way um we've come to look at a piece of infrastructure up here uh back in the day i'll give you some dates i'll give you some background lots of um reservoirs up here and lots of uh controlling of water and rain water so we're going right up into the hills behind us over here to look at an old tunnel a tunnel or something so i'll let you know when we get there but the way ahead is very steep and very bleak that is our location this week we're out in saddleworth in the pennine hills to the east of manchester city centre so although it's april i wore about six layers because i thought it might be cold up here and i'm absolutely baking hopefully i've made the tea you brought biscuits is it a surprise or if you got us anything good you have to find out you have to find out yeah why don't you say surprise the good thing about coming up here is there's things that you don't know that look like paths and this is one of those paths that we can see here in the chew valley it's actually the remains of the chew valley tram road when they had this massive civil engineering projects on the go it wasn't unknown from to build a small light railway to get all the equipment and the machinery up to the summit um so you're building this big reservoir up in the high up in the valley and one of the things they needed was was was vast quantities of clay it couldn't be found in the immediate vicinity but they did find some down in the local town near mickelhurst so they needed to get hundreds if not thousands of tons of this clay up the valley up to the uh the the chew valley reservoir and it was a gradual incline i'm going to show you a map here it's not the best of quality but there was a gradual incline and then there was an incline plane and then there was the the the railway carried on and this illustration shows the the inclines on the tram road uh so you can see it starts out fairly um gentle and then it starts a gradual ascent and then if you look to the right there it says incline plane and you can see it's almost well to me it looks not far off vertical um now apparently there was six steam locomotives employed on this uh tram road three were kept below the incline plane and three were kept above it um this is also said about the tram road it was apparently single track without any passing places or signals consequently there must have been either a very detailed roster or the trains traveled up and down in convoy there was a turntable at rams club in the chew valley and the cable hall incline at channel clough operated as a three rail system with full trucks being pulled up on one side and empty ones coming down on the other side um so there you go and that's the way the operated things there's a picture of the incline so locomotive would have brought the wagons up to the bottom and then they would have hauled the wagons up the incline and then the locomotive would have picked them up at the top and carried them further on to the right there you can just see a carriage on one of the locomotives i have read about visiting people that were visitors distinguished visitors that came and were taken up on the uh the tramway to be shown the works what i also admitted to tell you is that this all took place between 1907 and 1912 just to put some dates on it for you but it is an interesting report i'll just read this to you quickly remember i told you about mickelhurst where they were getting the clay from well it sounds like in those clay pits there was fun to be had because it says here it is to be hoped that an example will be made of the youths who were caught indulging in such dangerous amusement on the railway lines at mickelhurst on sunday for a few weeks past it has been quite common thing for the hundreds of lads to gather at the clay pit and run up and down the specially laid lines for the waterworks on bogies uh blah blah blah blah blah so they're running up and down the lines and obviously they're probably slipping all over the place and having a great time um when the fun was at its height and the boys were only about a couple of yards from the main line after a good long run an express passed and the experience of the boys was of such nature that most of them have abandoned the risky sport it says on the arrival of two police officers uh they captured about 20 youths and put an end to the excitement so they go 1907 1908 under there's chaos ensuing because hundreds of lads are gathering in the clay pits and having a great time things don't change do they really now a lot that previous information was from the saddleworth historical society bulletin and it was dated 1990 now obviously someone's digitized that and put it on the internet so i have to credit where i got all that information from there's more information coming up from a different different source but this can be found online and thank you to the saddleworth historical society and the person that digitized that information let's crack on with the explore so this valley that we're in as you can see here this is the two valley and we're heading up this road that i want to run up in a former life when i was really fit i'll just chat to her and show you i ran up that i had to keep stopping but i didn't run up it um top of here is a reservoir called the chew reservoir in fact the whole place has got a lot of reservoirs around there you've got dove stones reservoir down at the bottom a lot of local people know it's a local beauty spot but the more um adventurous of us head up to the reservoir like i said there's a piece of infrastructure up there it's a tunnel so we're going to check it out i'm not the first person to have gone in there but uh it's kind of like a flea in me i'm thinking i've never been there i need to check it out so even though it's april we've still got quite a bit of snow it's been quite a cold it's one of those days today where it's uh it's chilly but sunny the best the best of days really even so i've got a sweat on he's honking like a wildebeest and he's just sweating like god knows what so we're i think what we're looking for is somewhere in that snowy hillside over there not sure how we're going to get switzerlands with you look at this look at this is what lockdown does i'm over 50. i'm over 50. keep going so as you can see we're going to come up we're going to come to one of the old an old slog i know let's look he's got off top of hill i've been waiting for you james on my way up sweating like mad you can't throw with me i've got a camera you're saying you could bring your mobility screw up there next time do you want ice cream right so we've reached the quarry be warm draw an ice cream so we're in a quarry i think this was some sort of quarry look at this and somewhere the tunnel we're looking for is over there we've still got to cross this valley and go over there and i thought it was here and it's not so we walk home but up ahead there see behind there i can just see the dam there so we need to go up to it across the valley and then back down the other way oh what fun that was probably a stone quarry they needed lots of stone crushed stone and they needed to dress stone for all the infrastructure the the aggregate was for the the base of the dam around the dam and they obviously dressed a lot of stone for the the works around it some sort of something to the water into structure here isn't it that's nothing real is it no there's pt water there so that's the uh the jam that is the uh the two two reservoir i'll show you at the top of there in a minute we're going to walk up the side road there up the road there to the top you can see the infrastructure here that they've put in way way back around about 1912 all this was done it must have been a desolate place to work but of course it stood the test of time all stone there and a little tunnel at the bottom there and i presume that goes into let me put the exposure up that goes into um the reservoir what's that look at that so we just found this little hole here but look at this a hidden bathroom what is that oh that's well worth a dig in it why is that tail like that looks like victorian yeah yeah some sort of a wonder if that's been some sort of control room or something or what's that about at all okay so that remains a bit of a mystery but i found this picture and it says the old chew house um and that's up on the the chew valley road now that house looks to be in the location that we've just been in and the only reason i'm making that assumption is because the valley is quite shallow there and we're now at the top of the valley and it does get a lot shallower could that be what we saw or the remains of some basement area of that chew house not sure it's just a theory i'm putting forward we'll carry on so here we are closer up now to the little ramp the water ramp all sorts of valve mechanisms in there i'm really black sort of pt water there very peaty water and it goes up there some sort of valve there be careful because that might be deep oh boy get out of there your mum if your mum who's in there she'd kill you get up you're bloody fool cleaning my shoes off that's your excuse oh it's cool down there how far can you see yeah probably i don't know just dark yeah i'm gonna go up the slide [Music] oh [Music] [Music] so this is one of the overflows from the reservoir look at the icicles there you see them this is one of the overflows from the reservoir just a little trickle now but in when it's been raining a lot these things are absolutely spectacular and absolutely deadly um you'll get people that'll come sometimes have a walk up here and film them and the water just cascades down there it's absolutely mental well as you can see at the minute it's absolutely nothing and just around the corner it just goes into a basin i'll show you and it's the overflow for the reservoir are you taking the camera through yeah yeah nice one don't slip try not to what's that green stuff it's slippery [Music] so here's an amazing picture of the reservoir being constructed you can just see on the left hand side there one of the locomotives fantastic and the following pictures are probably around about completion time maybe inspection by the uh the bigwigs and the house on the left there was the reservoir keeper's house the reservoir keeper's house long since come this is the building of the what they call the puddle trench so this is what they needed all the clay for they had to uh put a central core of clay that was waterproof to dam the valley and that's down in the the puddle trench um apparently the men that worked down there said it was so deep they lost they lost the sight of daylight i'm going to show you an interesting comparison now with some old maps the old map is on the left-hand side modern day map on the right you can see there's no reservoir on the old map on the left if you look at where the cursor is it shows the joining of of the small cloth and the uh chew brook where they joined together and it was right in the middle there of where the reservoir is but just interesting to see the place before the reservoir was built and also the two the two brooks there met smack bang in the middle of the reservoir you would expect on a project of this size at that time there were accidents i'll read you a few of them 22nd of april 1908 a boiler burst and the steam winch which hauled the trucks up the hillside two men were cut and scolded 4th of december 1908 a man hit with an unexploded gelignite cartridge while clearing debris with a pickaxe he later died in hospital uh one man injured by flying rock 5th of may 1909 man cut his finger in a relatively minor accident but failed to clean the womb properly later died from sepsis and pneumonia 21st of august 1909 a drive belt on a stone crusher snapped lashing a man across his back fracturing his spine and fatally wounding him 24th of june 1910 man died at the bottom of a trench after being buried by the contents of a skip of clay which slipped i bet that was the puddle trench he died at the bottom of there 13th of february 1911 jelignite accidentally exploded injuring two men two men injured one of whom had his nose and eyes blown out horrific stories not to mention the harsh environment that we're also working in we're just outside oldham we're in saddleworth yes we're not a million miles away from manchester but i'll tell you now this is a very very harsh environment it gets freezing cold the whole place is exposed and winters up here are horrendous okay so i have to credit the website where i got a lot of this information it's www.doveheritage.com if you visit that there's further reading to be had you can get more information and details but that's where i've got my information from thank you to them right we're here i think so well we are no we're not we're not here we've got to go that way we've got to now travel on the other side of the valley all down there looking for this tunnel so you see where we've come up that side there we've now got to go along that side there is it visible this is quite a journey i have to admit to you that i find walking on these malls uh picturesque but mundane and quite exhausting to be honest with you it is a very difficult walk and very mundane but beautiful [Music] [Music] so we're still on this gold forsaken trail looking for this thing i think we should have come a different way you know um we're out on the edge of the valley there as you can see now the weather's proper closed in now it's gone cold sweating before moyo over there is wrapped up now i'm all right but we still think we've got about half a mile to go so if we get there and if you see what we're looking at don't come the way we've just come because i think there's a different way anyway the road goes over all in all lots of gullies here as well look at that corker and then a right drop down there to the valley below makes me nervous you know just just being on the hillside makes me nervous even though we stayed away from the edge there's something about heights all right in the tunnel something about heights just really gets me and we are right on the edge here hopefully we will have to go back on the other side of the valley where we came um we can just carry on and go back down into greenfield this might be an old goal of this video still not found the bugger i feel like we've been walking forever we've found it i've just done a zoom to it and it's that hidden against the backdrop background as i zoomed in i couldn't even see it on the camera zoom so hopefully i've got you that shot we've actually found it we've got to go down the hillside a little bit to get to it uh so what i understand this is a siphon i'll have to voice over more information because i did read on it it's an inverted sign it's yeah it's an inverter another inverted siphon i've been walking that far we're going to get to the entrance and we're going to uh i think we're going to have a brew are we james oh yeah you're the catering core fruit and biscuits will you give away now what you brought i thought you've been in the uh slaving away in the kitchen all night making something for us right across the lucky heather to the top of the tunnel this is what people don't show you see it's on the edge of a cliff last time i saw snow in april i was in ben nevis yeah so can you see what we're going to there's the top of it folks and you can see it's uh we're on the edge here again let's go around the front oh so just before we go in the tunnel brew time now i know you was up early yeah was your bacon slaving away bacon what are we having what have you gone through i made these [Music] tea types you used to have them in the 1970s right is there anything else in here worth eating nice biscuits right seriously right so i'll go i'll go for a plain biscuit i think [Music] hmm [Laughter] that was the tea darren it's all right it's actually yorkshire tea that you know brilliant it's yorkshire gold pretty well trained yeah i've got i've made it it's pretty good tea go go guess it's the best day around the altar it's going cold now on it has gone cold proper the weather's probably any easier he's shivering over here i'm sweating showing your phone and have a brew yeah we'll just deployment have a brew tell you about this week's sponsor cools it down what's that say on your mug i know the meaning of life it doesn't help me a bit what's that from it's a song lyric believe it or not and it's from one of my most favorite groups called magazine which leads me on to this week's sponsor let me tell you about weedly reedly is an app that you can download 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on the 16th of may also it's environmentally friendly because you don't have all that paper good can't beat it anyway that said thanks for listening right walking on the malls is very nice but this is more my kind of thing so we're going in here we're going to see how far it goes as you can see there's a big piping that you'll see when we get in there that's part of the i think the water siphon we'll walk to the end and see what it's like i'm not sure even sure if you get out at the other end of whether it's fenced off or not but i'll tell you something i think the other end comes out in the middle of nowhere um so we'll see what happens big torch yep ready to go let's go uh i better go first with the camera you know what it's quite warm in here this is gonna be a pain in the ass to walk through because you're gonna have to walk to one side and i've got the bag on my back that is gonna be a pain yeah it's got a big valve nice bit of a a valve there wonder if it still works this thing [Applause] you know what it looks like it's still there it's been that's a recent repair in it very difficult because you walk into one side all the time this is the pain in the ass darren's just coming in now i'm gonna put the beam on yeah if it bursts i think we're in trouble james you can see how james having to stoop there now you've got what's on one side yeah it's hard yeah this is gonna be a right slob yeah unfortunately you can kind of see the end and you can sit down on the pipe when a mile ago so how long do we think it is is it a mile yeah surely not a mile but it's nice and dry in here and kind of walking on sand and i'm only looking down so if i forget if i walk up to something i won't get a warning you're like me are you okay darren do you want to get up front well you can go front all the way back so i there's i think it's uh it's in quite a good night this pipe and i think it's still used and as james says it's um it's cold to touch so i think it's got water in it you can't actually walk quite fast down it though what a pain oh more spiders hang on a sec i'm gonna say little little tiny spiders but those are the ones that uh eat you i've made the calculation that if we were to get trapped or anything i think james could feed two grown men for about three weeks about your belly but let me i'll clear the way with spiders don't worry sorry mate sorry pal up you go out you go over you go that's six weeks we're gonna work there in it yeah [Music] i'm getting a bit wet now yeah a little bit nothing major which proper solid floor here yeah it is quite warm [Music] nice and warm okay so without um disrespecting the engineering that we're looking at this is probably one of the most boring longest featureless tunnels that i've ever been through but it has a story so i'll try and polish the turd as they say um this is the chu valley siphon quite a remarkable piece of engineering it really is and as i read about it it kind of raises more questions than it answers for me but i'll tell you what i know about it um so in these sections where i've speeded up i'll tell you what what's going on we're just going to enter a little bit of an interesting bit now oh look at this definitely getting a bit high in here now hopefully we are off where are we [Music] sinking my shoes will it no your shoes should be waterproof yeah right now we're getting muddy okay well it's not actually not too bad [Applause] how come in the middle it suddenly gets muddy [Music] um james has only got um boots on and it's getting muddy a little bit deeper um and it's feeling uncomfortable and we're going to carry on um so we can uh see how far we can go i mean it is a straight run it's a straight tunnel it's just a bit muddy and a bit uh unpleasant but i've been in worse places okay so we need to start with some politics so for years and years and years industry downstream of these uh waterways that start off up in the malls are relying on the water i know for a fact that the cotton dying industry needs vast quantities of water and so this industry is using all this water all right suddenly in the 1907 1908 they come along and they start to make these massive dams and they make these reservoirs for drinking water um so industries up in arms so we have a problem so they come up with this idea of compensatory water so in brief the lower level reservoirs are for drinking water so if you know the area dove stones reservoir or if you're looking at the map dove stones reservoirs lower down and that is for drinking water the higher up reservoir such as chew valley reservoir which we've just looked at is full of water you've heard me say peaty water so there's a lot of peat peat bogs in the area the water that drains from it is kind of acidic very dark stained and it's not drinking water so the higher reservoirs are compensatory water lower reservoirs drinking water the higher reservoirs this this idea of compensatory water is to refill the water courses for downstream industry industry so industry up in arms you can't take out water courses you know you've choked them you're using them now for drinking water so they build a reservoir and they build a network of pipes so they can move water around and subsidize these waterways that are now probably half the flow of what they were before and i'm only guessing there so that's what the tube valley reservoir was it was a compensatory water scheme and this um this siphon we're looking at the pipe is um part of moving that water around i'm going to show you now where this siphon runs from it it goes from the swine shawl reservoirs up in an arc it goes up 119 meters from its base up into the hills and then back down again and and it discharges its contents of water into the tube rook i think i've got that right it's coming from the swine shawl reservoir to the tube rook i'll show you the root of it now you'll get an idea of it right there you go i've left the town of aston underlining so you get a appreciation of the location and the distance the the broken arrow the red line starts at swine shore reservoirs and like i say it runs up imagine an arc if you're looking at it from the side 119 meters high and then drops back down the valley um into the tube two brook so when we went in that pipe there you see it goes downwards and into the ground drops now downwards and down the side of the valley um i'll just think i'll just pull out here and i'll give you a shot it runs down the side of the valley there now incredible um come on man show the shot and then back down to the tube rook so it's now going underground again so they've obviously tunneled it underground down the side of the valley i just find that incredible but they've obviously have to do that maybe to protect it from the frost and everything so that's what it does and that's what it is uh incredible absolutely incredible now the tunnel isn't the whole length of the siphon it's only that the very last part probably where you see that last dot and then that arrow head really so how long is this uh tunnel 613 yards or 561 meters and construction started in 1908 but i think the light at the end now he's getting bigger so i think we're more than halfway through more than halfway through what the hair we'll see i'll tell you what i won't be coming back here this is crap you know remember to under the glove rock that was easier than this once he was in ah got a sweat on you see darren down there oh you've got a sweat on proper sweat on you yeah it's never ended the point the thing is there might be a gate at the other end god why right i'll turn the camera around we'll carry on so a few of you have been asking about the torch that i use it is a very good torch and it's took me a bit to get into it and get used to it but i i will give it a good rating now it's made by phoenix f-e-n-i-x um they're an american uh company costs a lot of money this is the lr40r i'm not a i'm not sponsored or anything just the people ask me who makes the torch so it's made by phoenix and uh because it was so expensive one of the members on my channel helped me out and bought half so thank you mike the torch is working really well anyway a load of uh i am coming in here look at this look at that there turn the middle bit off the one absolutely decided to come in there anyway i've reduced the power a bit on the torch and we'll go down we'll carry on going it's still muddy got this iron ore so again when you read the literature apparently this tunnel was mined from either side so the the dug it out the rock now we're not that much below when you go in and come out you're not very you're near the surface but i think it goes under a hill so obviously the entrance and exit are pretty much uh near this near the surface but obviously we're we go under a hill like i say um so yeah i wondered if it was a cotton cover but apparently it was mined out from both ends and just incredible the lens they went to isn't it to uh to move this water around you see darren down there just about here [Music] i really hope you know we can get out because i don't fancy coming back through it but if necessary [Music] [Music] there's a gate on the end there i don't know if it's hoping or not then you've got to watch the spiders now because as you get towards the exit that's where the uh it's where they like to be because little flying's coming yeah and you can just see the daylight naturally oh we can get out i think i think we can get out let's crawl on me back yeah the gate's open and the pipe if you notice here the pipe get me touch and sinks into the ground together watch that look at that big step big step to get over you know what's a good job put the torch on then as you get to the end there there's a big step near this valve be careful there's a big dip just after the big val [Music] thing [Music] the relief when you come out it's amazing isn't it stand up oh that was that was horrendous i've got a proper sweat on [Music] proper sweat on there now that was a it was a stoop weren't it just horrible nothing worse than stooping but what view when we come out it's amazing um i'm glad that i'm glad that gates off i'm so glad that gate's off because we would have had to go back if we have to but you know what i mean we've done it now we ain't going back in there i had to try my best to yeah hack it off ah right so there you go the inverted siphon the two valley inverted siphon the only thing inverted was us two yeah yeah yeah i don't blame james actually james had boots on and uh i think the water was going into his boots and stuff so we had we've got wells on me in the in darren and james is taller so it must have been one hell of a stoop friend apparently damon's just checked that's gloss up over there we think yeah uh we think tinch whistle or gloss up could be wrong and then if you go this way around here you've got the manchester city center down there just zoom in actually i was zoomed in yeah you can just see the peaks there manchester city center the peaks of the buildings well lovely view absolutely fantastic view so if you do that tunnel it really does bring you out on the other side of a desolate mall good job the weather's all right and already i'm trying to follow the tunnel but we've lost all reference to it now um just hope we're heading the right way walking over the tunnel interesting thing about this is when you would have done that tunnel and they would have just walked over the mall and i opened a mash memories of feli vaiduk he would have just walked over the moor and put pegs in yeah very well posting just followed the post and possibly made shafts i don't know whether it was that or whether it was a cutting cover what would rose up considerably now yeah so imagine the tunnel is a good few footballing up beneath us but i'll show you where we are the grass on this moorland can become tinder dry and during all the construction work a spark from one of the steam locomotives uh caused the mullen fire that was one of the delays they also were delayed because of the grouse shooting season they had to stop work for a certain time as well can you believe it right that was one hell of a walk whose idea was it you enjoy yourself james yeah it's been good walk yeah long before killing me anyway thanks very much for watching don't forget to check out my uh link to really the really offer it's in the description to this video and i'll pin it in the first comment thanks very much for watching i hope you enjoyed the malls again take care and i shall see you very soon in the next video bye for now [Music] you

Channel: Martin Zero

Views: 281,488

Rating: 4.8926406 out of 5

Keywords: Inverted syphon, syphon, tunnel, moors, edwardian england, Reservoir engineering, civil engineering, saddleworth moor, light gauge railway, narrow gauge railway, industrial locomotives, inclined plane, Chew reservoir, walking on the hills, Martin Zero

Id: no0QSrDMCpw

Length: 45min 25sec (2725 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 18 2021