Where does Manchester's water come from?

Over the centuries, Manchester has had several world firsts including the country’s first ever working canal in 1761 and the world’s first ever railway line in 1830. The northern city is hailed as being the world's first industrialised city at the heart of the industrial revolution.

This goes someway towards to explaining where Manchester's water comes from and the extraordinary Victorian engineering that is still in place today. In the early 19th century, the exponential growth of its cotton industry put the city at the centre of global manufacturing and trade which placed an increasing demand on water supplies.

The glacial valley of Thirlmere in the Lake District was identified as one of the purest sources of water in the UK. Following an act of Parliament, a 96 mile aqueduct was built to re-direct the water flowing from St Johns Beck to Keswick and further south to Manchester.

Section of hills were spectacularly hewn to carry 55,000,000 imperial gallons down its amazing cave like tunnels . An excellent feat of Victorian engineering, it is the longest aqueduct in the country that uses just gravity and no pumps.

Now managed by United Utilities, the route still provides water to not only Manchester but smaller places en route and is supplemented by Haweswater among other smaller reservoirs. Today, 220 million litres of clean drinking water make a 36-hour journey to Manchester making up 11% of the North West's supply.

Sunken villages

A controversial scheme, a village in the valley of Mardale was actually sacrificed to supply Manchester with water in the 1930s. Now known as Haweswater reservoir, the picturesque villages of Measand and Mardale Green were flooded to create a 56 mile underground aqueduct.

Hundreds of people were forced to leave their homes including the 97 bodies that were buried in a graveyard. Most buildings were blown up by Royal engineers for demolition practice and a church was dismantled stone by stone and used to build the water take-off tower on the western shore.

Haweswater is now one of the largest lakes in England at four miles long and half a mile wide. It also has a maximum depth of almost 200 feet. Its aqueduct is 90km long and hundreds of feet deep in places allowing 570 million litres of water to flow to Manchester.

In September of last year, water levels dropped unusually low at the reservoir enough to see the eerie remnants of Mardale Green. Incredible images show the rough outline of streets and the humpback bridge that were once part of the lost village.

At the time, United Utilities blamed a lack of rainfall and an influx of staycationers to the Lake District for the water levels being at 40% rather than the usual 70%.