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You will no doubt have read the pages on the history of the Lido, now here are the technical, reasons behind its decline.
It should be noted that these words are not those of Ruislip Online, instead they have been provided by Colin Bowlt and form part of a Ruislip, Northwood and Eastcote Local History Journal from 1998. You can find out more about this society here. This article has been reproduced with his kind permission, and initially opens with a reference to an earlier issue..
The
Two Wells.
A proposal to construct a pumping station at Ruislip Common
and abstract water was approved by Parliament in 1939 by the passing of the
Colne Valley Water Act. This had
not been completely straightforward since in January of that year the
Ruislip-Northwood Urban District Council had sealed a petition of protest
against the Bill. Whilst not opposing the work the Council desired to secure
certain safeguards. It was stated
that Harrow and Wembley as well as the Middlesex County Council were opposing
it. What effect this had is
unknown, but the commencement of World War II probably expedited matters.
The position of the well was in the field behind the houses
on the north side of Reservoir Road as shown on figure 1.
Progress was slow owing to war-time difficulties of man-power shortage
and poor quality materials, so that it was not until April 1942 that the 8 foot
diameter well bottom was reached at a depth of 275 feet and the top 100 feet had
been lined with steel tubes. It had
gone through 37 feet of clay, 25 feet of Reading Beds and into 213 feet of the
Upper Chalk. The trouble with the whole enterprise was that it failed to
produce the hoped for yield of water. Prior
to the deposit of the Bill, consulting geologists had stated that 2.5 m.g.d
(million gallons per day) was not an over optimistic estimate, but apparently
with no basic reasoning in support. An initial flow of 0.4 m.g.d looked
encouraging, so an addit (tunnel) was driven north under Copse Wood and then
north-east under Poor’s Field, (see figure 1) to tap more of the chalk, but
the yield only increased to 0.8 m.g.d. This
was eventually coaxed to 1.1 m.g.d after a total of some 300 feet of costly
tunnelling. Figure 1 shows that to
go under Poor’s Field meant going beyond the Limits of Deviation of the 1939
Act. In peace-time this would have
necessitated going back to Parliament to get a new Private Bill passed, but
under the Defence Regulations the Minister of Health simply issued an Order to
legalise progress in June 1943. The
Order was subsequently confirmed by Parliament retrospectively in 1945.
It was decided to sink a temporary 12 inch exploratory bore towards the northern end of Poor’s Field (see figure 1) and it was completed by August 1943. It went to a depth of 330 feet and the results were felt to be sufficiently encouraging to justify a proper well. However, Poor’s Field is common land, so a site for a 5 foot diameter well was arranged on land adjacent, in what was then the northern end of the Reservoir property (figure1). The concrete capped well surrounded by iron railings, and looking like the tomb of some forgotten warrior, can still be seen beside the Ruislip Nature Local Reserve. It was completed to a depth of 300 feet by August 1944. A yield addit was extended under Poor’s Field as shown. This eventually provided 2.25 m.g.d. With the 1.1 m.g.d from the first well it was decided to build a treatment works to handle 3.5 m.g.d on the site of the original boring. The operational buildings at the site of number 1 well appeared very temporary and I can remember the chugging of the pumps in the 1950s. It is so often difficult to recall when things actually cease. My best estimate is that water production stopped in the late 1950s/early 1960s. A letter dated 5th October 1977 to Mr S.W. Hester from Mr John Christie, Chief Engineer, Colne Valley Water Co. says: “It may be of interest to you to know that the combined reliable yields of the Ruislip Common and Poor’s Field wells fell far short of the hoped for 3.5 m.g.d. When we last used them some years ago the yield was about 1.5 m.g.d.”.
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The picture to the left is A4 size and therefore will take a while to open. Click on it to enlarge. |
Swallow-holes.
On February 26th 1951 Mr Hester gave a lecture on
swallow-holes to the Ruislip and District Natural History Society (which also
included local historians at that date before the formation of the Ruislip,
Northwood and Eastcote Local History Society) explaining that they were holes
which appear in the ground, sometimes without warning, where chalk strata is
close to the surface and cavities occurring in the chalk collapse.
He said that ten had been observed around the Reservoir in the last six
or seven years [i.e. since 1944] and that three were present in Poor’s Field.
In what appear to be notes for a paper he says: “Over a period of six
years I have observed nine swallow-holes along the northern and western sides of
the Reservoir. The largest of these
seen in November 1944 was situated at the waters edge and a large amount of
water from the Reservoir had disappeared down it.
Its dimensions were 15 feet long, 12 feet across and 10 feet deep.”
I think it significant that the swallow-holes did not occur until after
water pumping started under Poor’s Field. In an article on the local geology
in 1942 Mr Hester makes no mention of any such swallow-holes[iii]
and I well remember the interest they were causing in the Natural History
Society in the early 1950’s, as if they were still a novelty.
An interesting reference to a possible connection between
pumping water from bore-holes and swallow-holes occurs in a reply letter to Mr
Hester dated 25th March 1942 from a Mr F.K. Sinclair in connection with the
Eastbury Pumping Station. “... I should doubt very much if you would be
afforded any information about the system there, as the Company was violently
attacked in 1927 by the Watford Corporation and other bodies, alleging that the
pumping at that station was the cause of the subsidence which took place about
that date in Kingsfield Rd., Oxhey, when a hole 70 feet deep opened in the front
garden of a house. The petitions
which were lodged against the Colne Valley Water Bill 1927/8, mainly based on
this matter, resulted in the Company withdrawing the whole of the proposals in
the Bill for the sinking of further wells in the valley of the Colne.”
Could this have been the reason for the siting of the pumping stations on
Ruislip Common? Mr H. Wallhouse in his article in The Surveyor about the project says, “The site was, in fact,
largely dictated by political necessities, the intricacies of which are outside
the scope of this paper”.
It
all happens again,
with some curious results.
In a postscript to an article in the Society’s Journal
for 1991, I mentioned that because of continued lack of rain following the
partial draining of the Lido in early 1990 to allow repair work in the swimming
area, it had been impossible to refill it by natural means in time for a charity
event in July. Water was therefore
pumped from the now disused well that penetrates 300 feet deep into the chalk
under Poor’s Field. The sound of
the pump chugging away night and day continued for many days, but eventually the
water-level in the Lido was up again. Never
had I seen the water so clear, clean and limpid.
The day was saved! But the bore-hole had been activated again and in the summer
of 1991 a very large swallow-hole opened up on the western edge of the Lido and
swallowed-up a large amount of Lido water.
Hillingdon Borough had let the Lido to a private company
calling itself Eau Naturelle in February 1991, with a view to granting the
company a 99-year lease from October 1991.
There was ferocious public opposition as the company was planning mega
concerts by the waterside and was even considering organising War Games in Park
Wood. Council officers and the
directors of Eau Naturelle suffered a withering attack at a public meeting held
in a marquee at the Lido in August 1991. The
swallow-hole had opened up about a month before and the Council were beginning
to rue their decision. Council
officers seeking a contractor to fill in the hole were given estimates of £70,000
and upwards. To minimise costs the
Council agreed to pay Eau Naturelle’s rates of £22,000, if the company would
take over responsibility for the hole. In
the event the company paid David Cokeley just one pound and he did a deal with
the National Rivers Authority who paid him for the right to dump clay which was
being dug out of the Yeading Brook’s flood alleviation works[iv].
The site of the swallow hole is shown on figure 2.
The low water level stopped the dinghy sailing and
curtailed the water skiing and put a blight on Eau Naturelle’s plans.
The company agreed to share the costs of restoring water levels with the
Council, but about this stage the Borough Engineer decided, for entirely
unrelated reasons, that the level of the water in the Lido should be kept
permanently low. This was to
contain a possible massive cloud burst (risk: once in a hundred years) which
might otherwise flood houses which had been built downstream on the bed of the
Canal Feeder. The Feeder stream had
been diverted into the bed of the Canon Brook.
Another trouble for Eau Naturelle was that lorry loads of
clay and even rubble kept being dumped in the Lido even when the swallow hole
had been filled. This was just the
chance the Council were waiting for. Eau
Naturelle had breached their contract and were ordered to leave in June 1992[v].
The Lido management was put out to tender again in December 1992, but the
Lido site lay derelict for a couple of years before an arrangement was made with
the Whitbread Breweries in 1994 to build a family restaurant and renew
facilities[vi].
In the interim the Art Deco building had not been properly protected and
was set on fire in June 1993 and demolished in March 1994[vii].
Whitbread’s Waterside Restaurant opened in August 1996, faintly echoing
the lines of the original 1935 Lido building.
The former Reservoir never was allowed to fill up. The
Council were too afraid of that once in a hundred year flood and the
compensation implications. The
sailing boats have not returned and the muddy exposed edges have become covered
with grass and developing scrub. Things
have changed, but who would guess that it all started with a bore hole.
FIG 2 Ruislip Lido Jan 1993, showing the site of the 1991 swallow hole.
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The picture to the left is A4 size and therefore will take a while to open. Click on it to enlarge. |
References
[i]
S.W. Hester Archive: personal possession.
[ii]
Hal Wallhouse, Genesis of a
Pumping Station, The Surveyor and Municipal and County Engineer, 10th
May 1946.
[iii]
S.W. Hester Archive: personal possession.
[iv]
Uxbridge Gazette: 27 May 1992
[v]
Ibid: 17. 6. 92
[vi]
Ibid: 6.7.94
He took a great interest in the problem of finding sufficient water in the area to supply the local needs. He was baffled by the decision to sink the well at the chosen site as the site was contra-indicated by the theory he had used to site several successful wells elsewhere. As I recall, the reason the site was chosen at all was simply that acquisition of the right to dig was easy!
My father sited the successful well at Jacket's Lane. I recall going down in the bucket and being very impressed with the inflow. My father was also involved in providing advice that led to the clearing out of the channel of the River Pinn after the flood of 1936 or 1937.
Brian Hester
Read more about Mr Hester, buildings that crack in Ruislip and worms that turn in Harefield
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