Piethorne Reservoir

Construction work started in 1858, the reservoir being first completely filled ten years later. During the excavations for the reservoir, a Celtic spear-head with a 5 inch blade was discovered, implying human habitation in the area during the Bronze Age. It was soon found that moorland silt was being carried into the reservoir from its feeder streams, Piethorne Brook and Cold Greave Brook; Hanging Lees Reservoir was next built as a settling reservoir. Four further reservoirs were built; Kitcliffe and Norman Hill in the 1870s, Ogden, started in 1878, to compensate mills further down Piethorne Brook for loss of water supply, following the Gas and Water Works Facilities Act 1870, and Rooden…

Navvies, shorthand for navigational engineers, worked on the reservoir under the "Butty Gang" system, whereby groups of navvies were paid on a fixed lump sum basis, leaving the workers to divide the money between themselves. They were well-paid, hard-working, and hard-living; some were lodged in the Long Shed at Kitcliffe. One Betty Whitehead, a seventy-year old local woman, recalled in the Oldham Chronicle newspaper in 1957 that the navvies "usually had a pocketful of money and a bellyful of beer". It was said that navvies "spilt more beer than locals drank". Fights were common.