Ben Crom Reservoir is a

reservoir A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contro ...

located in the Mourne Mountains near Kilkeel, County Down, Northern Ireland. Along with

Silent Valley Reservoir The Silent Valley Reservoir is a reservoir located in the Mourne Mountains near Kilkeel, County Down in Northern Ireland. It supplies most of the water for County Down, surrounding counties and most of Belfast. It is owned and maintained by Northe ...

, which is situated further down the Kilkeel River valley, it supplies water for County Down, surrounding counties and most of

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom ...

. It was constructed between 1953 and 1957, as the final part of the Mourne scheme to provide water to Belfast which started with the passing of the Belfast Water Act in 1893. Ben Crom is a mass gravity dam, meaning it is made of concrete and designed so that the dam's own weight stabilises it against the force of the water. The middle of the structure consists of

mass concrete Mass concrete is defined by American Concrete Institute Committee 207 as "any volume of concrete with dimensions large enough to require that measures be taken to cope with the generation of heat from hydration of cement and attendant volume change ...

with granite plumbs weighing up to 5 tonnes. The outer face of the dam was made with precast concrete blocks. The project cost approximately £1 million to build and employed 186 people. In 2012

Northern Ireland Water Northern Ireland Water Limited ( ga, Uisce Thuaisceart Éireann; Ulster-Scots: ''Norlin Airlan Wattèr'') is a water company in Northern Ireland. Formerly an executive agency within Northern Ireland Executive, it became a government-owned co ...

carried out refurbishments at Ben Crom as part of a £1.6 million scheme to maintain and improve a number of reservoirs in Northern Ireland. File:Ben Crom Reservoir (detail) - geograph.org.uk - 640950.jpg, Ben Crom Reservoir Outflow at the bottom of the reservoir wall File:The Ben Crom Dam.jpg, The Ben Crom Dam. Behind the dam is the Ben Crom Reservoir with a capacity of 1,700,000,000 litres. The hill in the background is also known as Ben Crom File:Ben Crom Dam Wall.jpg, View of the dam wall at the Ben Crom Reservoir

References

{{authority control Reservoirs in County Down