The Godley 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 ...

in Godley, Hyde,

Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tam ...

. It was completed in 1851, as a critical part of the

Longdendale Chain The Longdendale Chain is a sequence of six reservoirs on the River Etherow in the Longdendale Valley, in northern Derbyshire. They were constructed between 1848 and 1884 to a design by John Frederick Bateman to supply the growing population of ...

project that brings fresh water to

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

. The Manchester Corporation Waterworks Act 1847 gave permission for the construction of the Woodhead,

Hollingworth Hollingworth is a village in the Metropolitan Borough of Tameside, in Greater Manchester, England. It is about 11 miles (19 km) east of Manchester on the Derbyshire border near Glossop. Historically part of Cheshire, it gave its name to ...

and Arnfield reservoirs, and the construction of a masonry aqueduct to convey drinking water from Arnfield and Hollingworth to a service reservoir at Godley. Water was captured from the

River Etherow The River Etherow is a river in northern England, and a tributary of the River Goyt. Although now passing through South Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Greater Manchester, it historically formed the ancient county boundary between Cheshire and Derb ...

and stored in the great reservoirs and then flowed through the six-foot bore Mottram Tunnel to Godley. At Godley the water was filtered by passing it through straining frames made of oak and fine wires. It was

chlorinated In chemistry, halogenation is a chemical reaction that entails the introduction of one or more halogens into a compound. Halide-containing compounds are pervasive, making this type of transformation important, e.g. in the production of polyme ...

to remove bacteria and then entered Manchester's water distribution network. This method was successfully used until the early 1960s, when additional treatment works were built at Arnfield and Godley. In 2016

United Utilities United Utilities Group plc (UU), the United Kingdom's largest listed water company, was founded in 1995 as a result of the merger of North West Water and NORWEB. The group manages the regulated water and waste water network in North West Engla ...

completed the construction of a 3 MW floating solar farm, the second and largest of its type in the UK, on the reservoir.

References

{{authority control Drinking water reservoirs in England Reservoirs in Greater Manchester