Yarrow Reservoir - named after the River Yarrow - is a reservoir in the

Rivington Rivington is a village and civil parish of the Borough of Chorley, Lancashire, England, occupying . It is about southeast of Chorley and about northwest of Bolton. Rivington is a rural area consisting primarily of agricultural grazing land, ...

chain in

Anglezarke Anglezarke is a sparsely populated civil parish in the Borough of Chorley in Lancashire, England. It is an agricultural area used for sheep farming, also site of reservoirs that were built to supply water to Liverpool. The area has a large expanse ...

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, and has a storage capacity second to

Anglezarke Reservoir Anglezarke Reservoir is the largest reservoir in the Rivington chain to the west of Anglezarke in Lancashire, England. Anglezarke Reservoir has three embankments: the Charnock Embankment, the longest, is long and high, the Knowsley Embankmen ...

. Construction of the reservoir, designed by Liverpool Borough Engineer Thomas Duncan, began in 1867. In 2002, several tons of fish were transported to this reservoir when the

Upper Rivington reservoir Upper Rivington Reservoir is situated centrally in the Rivington chain of reservoirs, on the West Pennine Moors in Lancashire, England, between Rivington and Anglezarke. The engineer for the Rivington reservoirs was Thomas Hawksley and constr ...

was completely drained for essential maintenance work. The construction of Yarrow Reservoir was described in Wm. Fergusson Irvine's book "A Short History Of The Township Of Rivington" : On the banks of the reservoir is a 'face in the wall' - an effigy carved into a large stone on top of the

dry stone wall Dry stone, sometimes called drystack or, in Scotland, drystane, is a building method by which structures are constructed from stones without any mortar to bind them together. Dry stone structures are stable because of their construction m ...

, which is said to depict an inspector who worked for the

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

Corporation and made workers' lives a misery. The construction of the reservoir meant that a small hamlet called Alance was flooded, centred on the rebuilt Alance Bridge, and a large dwelling was demolished - Turner's Farm - which lives on in current maps only in name as Turner's Embankment.

References

{{authority control Reservoirs in Lancashire Rivington