Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 1970 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| WATER! THE STORY OF YOUR LOCAL SUPPLY | 1964 | 1964-01-01 |
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Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Colour Sound: Sound Duration: 24 mins 42 secs Credits: Photography - Ian Gillot, Direction - John Mottershaw, Production - Alec Dalby Subject: Sport Industry |
| Summary Commissioned by Sheffield Water Undertaking, this film tells the story of how water is supplied to Sheffield and warns of the importance not to waste water. It shows some of the local reservoirs, pumping stations and treatment works, as well as the Sheffield Water Undertaking sports ground at Crookes. |
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Description
Commissioned by Sheffield Water Undertaking, this film tells the story of how water is supplied to Sheffield and warns of the importance not to waste water. It shows some of the local reservoirs, pumping stations and treatment works, as well as the Sheffield Water Undertaking sports ground at Crookes.
Title – Water! The Story Of Your Local Supply
The film opens with a dripping tap in a bathroom, which a boy comes in to use and leaves still dripping. Leaving the house, he walks down a road...
Commissioned by Sheffield Water Undertaking, this film tells the story of how water is supplied to Sheffield and warns of the importance not to waste water. It shows some of the local reservoirs, pumping stations and treatment works, as well as the Sheffield Water Undertaking sports ground at Crookes.
Title – Water! The Story Of Your Local Supply
The film opens with a dripping tap in a bathroom, which a boy comes in to use and leaves still dripping. Leaving the house, he walks down a road in the pouring rain. Members of Sheffield Corporation Water Committee meet around a large table in Castle Market headquarters and mention the history of water management in the region. A woman comes into the building with a water problem, and the telephonist receptionist takes calls from the switchboard. In the office of the Senior Engineer, a representative of a company is meeting to discuss supplying his factory with mains water. They look over maps of Sheffield and the surrounding area. At the Eastern Pennines, the River Don starts. The narrator gives the annual rainfall figures and how much of this is lost. A man takes the daily rainfall measure at one of the 60 measuring points in the gathering ground. The streams in the area all flow into this river.
At one of the reservoirs, the reservoir attendant walks past a group having a picnic on the grass. They are listening to the radio which is playing a pop channel. A group of walkers make their way from the moorland down to one of the reservoirs, a 30,000 acre reservoir on the eastern slopes of the Pennines. The commentary explains the history of water management in the region and that the grounds are open to the public and are Zones of Protection. The group of walkers make their way around the reservoir. Nearby trees are being grown from seedlings to refurbish the woodland in Loxley Valley. In the Uden Valley the Broomhead and Moor Hall reservoirs are shown.
Further south and west are the three Redmires reservoirs. The narrator informs us that only 25% of the water from the three Derwent Valley reservoirs goes to Sheffield. In order to meet the great need of the cities in the area, a scheme was developed to take water directly from the River Derwent near Elvington. The pipeline is shown on a map. The 40 miles of pipeline is constructed, with large pipes being laid across railways and rivers. At Brayton Bath near Selby a seven million gallon service reservoir and pumping station is being built. At Frickley a pumping station is being built above coal reserves. Here a steam train passes by in the background. The film then shows a steelworks, with the narrator stating it is estimated that within ten years Sheffield and the area will need an extra six million gallons of water every day.
The Millhouses outdoor pool packed with swimmers, and sailors are out on Damflask reservoir where Sheffield Corporation has leased sailing rights to three accredited Sheffield sailing clubs. Sailing boats are banked along the side of the reservoir and out on the water. There is also a man fishing.
On a map the filter stations around Sheffield are pointed out. Over images of the reservoir, the narration explains water treatment. In a water treating station, the filtration process is explained in diagrams. Each stage of the treatment is explained as the different parts of the plant are seen at work, finishing at the sludge pond. At the Bradfield Treatment Station, the monitors and the clarity bowls are shown. Then on to Langsett where there are open filters. At the Headquarters in Sheffield, a chemist takes bacterial counts which are shown on a wall chart. There is a test for radioactive fallout and for water hardness, with an explanation of the right level of water hardness that is required and why.
As a woman is washing dishes in her kitchen it is explained that new housing developments increase the need for water. There is a view across a large area of new housing and flats. Traffic passes by the Oaks Water Tower which is seen from various vantage points.
At Hadfield Open Service Reservoir at Crookes which was built in 1951, a cricket match is taking place in a sports ground field just above. This is for the employees of the Water Undertaking. There is also a tennis match.
After a pipe has burst, a woman rings the Sheffield Water Undertaking. Within four minutes they arrive to fix it, first turning off the stop tap outside situated in the road. At the water depot a large van is being loaded and leaves to go out and carry out maintenance. Through a metal rod, an inspector listens to a pipe for leakages. He then goes into a house to change a washer on the tap, free of charge.
The boy at the beginning tries a tap only to find that there is no water. Outside a group of residents get water from a pipe on a lorry. The boy joins them and returns with a bucketful of water which he carries upstairs. The film ends again showing the dripping tap and with a plea not to waste water.
End credits – produced for the Sheffield Water Undertaking
Photography - Ian Gillot, Direction - John Mottershaw, Production - Alec Dalby
Context
This film is one of many films made by professional filmmaker John Mottershaw of Sheffield. The film fits in with other promotional films that John Mottershaw made in the 1950s and 1960s, for public bodies and commercial enterprises. Others are Invest In A Casting (1963-65), with the same production team, Service To The Public - Barnsley British Co-Operative Society (1951), and on YFA Online, Drive with Clare (1963-65). These traded under the name of Mottershaw Commercial Films, and they...
This film is one of many films made by professional filmmaker John Mottershaw of Sheffield. The film fits in with other promotional films that John Mottershaw made in the 1950s and 1960s, for public bodies and commercial enterprises. Others are Invest In A Casting (1963-65), with the same production team, Service To The Public - Barnsley British Co-Operative Society (1951), and on YFA Online, Drive with Clare (1963-65). These traded under the name of Mottershaw Commercial Films, and they continued to make commercial films right into the 1970s, as with Investment Casting By Design (1970). Prior to that the Mottershaw business operated as Sheffield Photo Company, which was founded by John’s grandfather Frank Mottershaw snr. in 1882. This name, or Sheffield Photo Finishers, was retained into the 1950s – see Books in Hand (1956). Frank Mottershaw was an important early filmmaker, and the YFA Online have films of his – see Mixed Babies (1905).
At the time that this film was made, the supply of water was in public hands and had been since the 19th century, with it locally passing into the hands of Sheffield City Council in 1880. After this film a Water Act was passed in 1973, and in 1974 Yorkshire Water Authority took over from Sheffield Waterworks. As part of their programme of privatisation, the Thatcher Government sold off the water industry under the Water Act of 1989. Today Sheffield is supplied by Yorkshire Water plc. Yorkshire Water no longer has charge of the Derwent reservoirs, which now come under Severn Trent Water, but retains control over Broomhead and More Hall reservoirs. Historically, and geographically, this might seem something of an anomaly. The three reservoirs of the Upper Derwent Valley – Derwent, Howden and Ladybower – were built by the Derwent Valley Water Board to supply, among other cities, Sheffield (and some of the water they hold still goes to Sheffield). The dams have an interesting history. Derwent Valley was ideal for reservoirs as it has long deep valleys with narrow points for dam building (impounding reservoirs), a high rainfall (average 1350 mm per year) and an almost uninhabited moorland catchment area. Ladybower reservoir, began in 1935, and after protests around the flooding of two villages – Ashopton and Derwent – was finished in 1943 (taking a further two years to fill), making it the largest reservoir in Britain. It was here that the 617 Dambusters Squadron of Lancaster Bombers practised for their famous raid on the Ruhr dams in May 1943. In fact Ladybower rarely supplies drinking water as it requires a pump, unlike the two other reservoirs which work by gravity. In addition to these there are the three Redmires reservoirs in Fulwood (Upper, Middle and Lower), fed from the Hallam Moors, which date from the 1830s. Then there are the larger three reservoirs of Agden, Dale Dike and Strines of Bradfield Dale, fed by the River Loxley, which were constructed in the 1860s. With one of these there was a major disaster. The Dale Dike dame, built in 1859, burst on March 11th 1864 resulting 240 people being drowned. Martin Olive states that: "The accident seemed to point the danger of dependence on a private company for essential services, and the Council began a long fight to take the company over, only succeeding in 1888." (References) Despite the combined capacity of these reservoirs, there was clearly a concern at the time this film was commissioned about maintaining the supply of water. A concern that has only grown in the intervening years: in Britain hose pipe bans are still fairly common. Yet the Daily Mail (2nd July 2010) reports that: “Experts estimate that the nation's water firms combined are losing enough water through leaks to supply a staggering 22 million people a day.” The Environment Agency has warned that demand for water could increase by 25 per cent by 2020. Water is so central to so much of life, and human society, that any problem with its supply – whether for drinking, food production or manufacture – is often disastrous. This is certainly the case for large parts of the world where there is a shortage of drinking water. A United Nations Report in 2006 stated that, “13 per cent of the world's population - over 800 million people - do not have enough food and water to live healthy and productive lives.” Providing water is closely linked in with sanitation, as water-related disease causes 300 to 500 million episodes of sickness and 1.6 to 2.5 million deaths each year (References). According to one report, Charting our water future: Economic frameworks to inform decision-making – by consultants McKinsey & Company on behalf of the 2030 Water Resources Group – “by 2030, unless substantial changes are made to conserve water and build new supplies, there will be a 40% gap between projected water demand from a bigger, richer global population, and ‘accessible, reliable’ supplies.” One commentator states that, “More than a billion people worldwide do not have access to adequate supplies of safe water, and less than 10% of the world's population receives a treated water supply.” (David Brown, References) The film highlights the problem with a public good such as water: namely, that people can use more than they need without much cost, and when this is a finite resource this can lead to tragedy for all. In fact not long after this film was made, in 1968, the ecologist Garrett Hardin gave a name to this problem, ‘the tragedy of the commons’: whereby the free access and unrestricted demand for a finite resource ultimately reduces the resource too much. The film appeals to users of water to be aware of loss through dripping taps, to not think as purely individuals, as ‘free riders’, but consider the social need. The all-powerful ‘market’ is usually seen as taking care of this – water meters partially help – though of course at the expense of the less well-off. There is much argument as to the nature of these ‘problems’, whether they are indeed problems, and what kind of societal organisation might best deal with the pressing issues of finite resources – debates which get precious little public airing in the media. One aspect of the film that might strike a younger generation as odd is the test for radiation from atomic explosions. The UN Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty of 1996 bans all nuclear explosions in all environments, for military or civilian purposes. But at the time of writing (July 2010) it has not yet entered into force, held up by three States that have neither signed nor ratified the accord: India, Pakistan and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Nevertheless, there are hardly any nuclear tests today, compared with a mushrooming of tests in the late 1950s and 1960s (1959 and 1960 aside). The USSR detonated a 50-megaton nuclear warhead in 1961, the largest yet, and this sparked off a spate of tests, mainly by the US and the USSR, despite the Partial Test Ban of 1963. Although this treaty covered the great bulk of testing, not all countries signed: France continued testing until 1974 and China until 1980. What is more, this simply drove testing underground, literally, and apart from the boom year of 1961, testing in fact went up after the treaty. There was, therefore, severe radioactive fallout from nuclear explosions. Some of the facilities that are seen in the film are still in use, such as the 40 miles of pipeline from Elvington completed in 1965. Also still in use is the Oakes water tower, supplying the Norton Area, opened in 1961. One place that hasn’t survived is Bradfield Filter station, which was built in 1913 and closed in 1995 – there is a thread on this at Sheffield forum, and great photos on the excellent urbexforums website and 28dayslater. Another facility that has sadly gone is the Sheffield Waterworks Sports Club, next to Hadfield reservoir, which became derelict and now has new houses built on it – see the thread on Sheffield Forum. Among those who participated in the Sports Club in the 1960's was Dereck Gregory, “the backbone of the Sheffield Waterworks Cricket team”. According to blogs on Sheffield Forum, Dereck Gregory was regarded by some as "Mister Waterworks", and may well be on this film playing cricket. ‘Sheffield Waterworks Company’ is now only a pub (waterworks indeed!). References K J Allison (Editor), A P Baggs, G H R Kent, J D Purdy, 'Elvington', A History of the County of York East Riding: Volume 3: Ouse and Derwent wapentake, and part of Harthill wapentake (1976), pp. 12-17. Martin Olive, Sheffield City Council, A Short History of Sheffield, Sheffield Libraries Archives and Information, 2006 Upper Derwent Valley urbexforums 28dayslater Sheffieldforum Bradfield Filter station Sheffield Forum Sheffield Waterworks Sports Club Wateraid Tragedy of the Commons The United Nations World Water Development Report 2 Charting our water future: Economic frameworks to inform decision-making The Great Flood at Sheffield - 1864 David Brown, Pulling the plug on wasting water |
