Cardiff Corporation Waterworks, its predecessors and successors have provided a public water supply and sewerage and sewage treatment services to the Welsh city of Cardiff since 1850.
History In the early 19th century, most of Cardiff was built on land overlaying gravel beds, which extended to the north and west of the populated area. Residents obtained their water from private and public wells, dug down into the gravel beds. The town was split into two parishes in 1841, St John the Baptist and St Mary, and at that time the population was 10,077. The main public well was in the High Street, although water was also obtained from the River Taff and the Glamorganshire Canal. Industrial development, notably the construction of the West Bute Dock in 1839 and the Taff Vale Railway to connect the dock to the railway system, meant that the population began to increase significantly, and the need to provide a better water supply became urgent.
In 1850 a private company obtained the (13 & 14 Vict. c. lxix) allowing them to build a water works, with which to supply water to the town, the port, and a number of surrounding villages. The had an authorised capital of £20,000, but soon found that this was not sufficient to complete the works, and so went back to Parliament. They obtained a new act of Parliament, the (16 & 17 Vict. c. xxiv), on 14 June 1853, which repealed the first one, and allowed them to raise more capital. They constructed a pumping station at Ely, close to the River Ely, some to the west of the town centre. Water from the river entered a settling pool, and was then filtered before being pumped to a service reservoir at Penhill, Llandaff, to the north of the town, from where a network of pipes allowed it to reach the town and the docks by gravity. Subsequently, the supply was increased by a culvert built along the south side of the river, which collected water from springs and the water bearing strata nearby.
Cardiff continued to expand, with the opening of the Rhymney Railway in 1858 and the Bute East Dock the following year, and so the water company obtained a third act, the (23 & 24 Vict. c. cv), allowing them to increase their capital resources and the geographical area which they supplied. Works included a storage reservoir at Lisvane, with a catchment area of , collecting water from the Llanishen, Nant Mawr, Nant Draw, Nant Felin and Nant Dulas. Pipes were laid from the reservoir to intakes on each of the streams, and filter beds were constructed on the outlet from the reservoir. In order to supply Penarth, some to the south-west of the town centre, a low-level service reservoir was built at Cogan, from where pumps raised the water to a distribution reservoir at Llandough, which was sufficiently high to supply Penarth by gravity. Water was supplied to a number of surrounding parishes, the total area of supply being . The company could not take more than (Ml) per day from the River Ely, but that and the Lisvane reservoir remained sufficient until 1878. The reservoir held of water.
In 1875, Cardiff Corporation obtained parliamentary approval to buy out the Cardiff Waterworks Company in the Cardiff Improvement Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. clxxxvii), but failed to reach an agreement with them at the time. The company sought a fourth act of Parliament, the (41 & 42 Vict. c. cxliv), to enable them to construct additional works at Ely, and a new reservoir at Llanishen to supplement the supply to Cardiff and to extend their area of supply to parts of Llandaff and Whitchurch. The corporation again tried to buy out the company, but still could not reach agreement, so decided to oppose the company's bill, on the basis that the new works would not be adequate for the future requirements of Cardiff. On the day before the bill was due to appear before the House of Commons committee, the company agreed to sell, for a price of £300,000, resulting in the corporation withdrawing their objections. They paid the costs of getting the bill through Parliament, and also redeemed the company's debenture bonds, at a cost of £20,450.
Parliamentary approval for the purchase of the company and authority to borrow £470,000 was obtained in the Cardiff Corporation Act 1879 (42 & 43 Vict. c. cxxxiii). The corporation took possession of the works on 29 September 1879, but the deed confirming the transfer of ownership was not signed until 24 December. The payment of the money was not without drama, as the corporation wanted to use two cheques, one for £165,000 drawn on the National Provincial Bank, and another for £135,000 drawn on the Brecon Old Bank. Two days before the final purchase, the company declined to accept the cheques, despite assurances from the banks that they would be honoured, and so the corporation elected to pay in gold. The company realised the enormous task of counting that much money, and so the banks requested the Bank of England to print two special notes, for the two amounts agreed. On the final day, officers from the corporation collected the note for £165,000 from the National Provincial Bank, but when they got to the Brecon Old Bank, the note had not arrived. They refused to leave the bank even when it closed, and half an hour later, the postman delivered it, enabling the purchase to be completed.
Corporation ownership The corporation consulted John Taylor, one of the original directors and promoters of the Cardiff Waterworks Company, who had also been their engineer, about the works at Ely. In a report produced on 23 September 1880, he recommended that the culverts be extended, and work began on new culverts on the north bank of the river, as a way to quickly increase the volume of water available. In an average year, this increased the resources to per day, and even in the very dry years of 1884 and 1887, the yield was still per day. The cost of the work was £10,614, while the project was managed by John Avery Brandon Williams, who had been Borough Engineer since 14 August 1876, and then became Waterworks Engineer from 11 June 1883. In March 1881, he was asked to produce a report on all possible sources of water for Cardiff, so that planning for the future could begin.
He presented his extensive findings in May and August 1881, and suggested that the best scheme would be to utilise the waters of the Taff Fawr, one of the two sources of the River Taff, on the southern slopes of the Brecon Beacons. He also suggested that the capacity of the Llanishen Reservoir, authorised by the Cardiff Waterworks Act 1878, could be increased from to , without exceeding the limits of deviation specified by the Act. Unable to decide the best way to proceed, they asked the water engineer John Frederick Bateman for advice in December 1881, and in June 1882 he confirmed that the Taff Fawr scheme was the best option. Work began at Llanishen soon afterwards, so that surplus water from the Lisvane catchment would not be lost while the Beacons reservoir scheme was being built. The contract for Llanishen Reservoir was awarded to John Mackey, but it is not clear exactly what this included, since the corporation awarded a contract for enlargement works soon after Mackey completed his contract in 1884. Hill Brothers began work on this second phase, but pulled out in July, due to financial difficulties, after which T A Walker took over, completing the work in 1886.
A bill for the Taff Fawr scheme was submitted to Parliament in November 1883, and a House of Commons committee considered it between 1 May and 20 May 1884, as there were 16 petitions against it, particularly from riparian landowners. The corporation called on many of the major water engineers of the day to give evidence, including Bateman, Thomas Hawksley, James Mansergh, and George H. Hill. Their own engineer, J. A. B. Williams also gave evidence, as did the meteorologist George James Symonds, and although it cost £3,652 to fight their case, it was successful and the Cardiff Corporation Act 1884 (47 & 48 Vict. c. ccxxii) received royal assent on 7 August. They were empowered to collect water from a catchment of , which was split into an upper and a lower area. Because they had to supply compensation water to maintain the flow in the Taff Fawr, treating the catchment as two separate areas meant that the full amount of compensation water did not have to be provided from the start of the project. The upper area covered and required a compensation flow of per day, under half of the total for the whole catchment.
The whole scheme consisted of three storage reservoirs, two in the upper area and one in the lower area, with a combined capacity of , a pipeline, using pipes of and diameter, running from the upper reservoirs to Lisvane and Llanishen, with intermediate balancing reservoirs at Cefn, Blackbrook, and Rhiwbina. There was also a service reservoir and filter beds at Rhiwbina, from which Llandaff, Maindy, Penarth, Penylan and Whitchurch could be supplied by gravity. Work began on the pipeline in October 1885, and was completed in September 1888. Construction of the balancing and service reservoirs began in December 1887 and was completed in November 1888. The first storage reservoir to be built was Cantreff Reservoir No.2, the lowest of the two in the upper area. Construction took rather longer, as work started in the spring of 1886, but was delayed as the Corporation became embroiled in litigation with the first and second contractors employed to carry out the work. Eventually they took control of the task themselves on 13 June 1891, and the reservoir was operational by 14 September 1892, with Williams, their Waterworks Engineer, overseeing the use of direct labour. In order to facilitate the transport of materials to site, of standard gauge railway were built, connecting to the mainline near Cefn-coed-y-cymmer station. Cantreff Reservoir became known as Cantref Reservoir in the 20th century.
The Cardiff Corporation Act 1884 stated that Beacons Reservoir, the highest of the three, would have a capacity of but as the details were being worked out, Williams the Waterworks Engineer found that its capacity could be more than doubled by building the dam a little higher up the valley. Geological investigation revealed that the new site would also provide a solid watertight foundation, and so the Corporation went back to Parliament, and the Cardiff Corporation Act 1894 (57 & 58 Vict. c. clxi) authorised the change. Work had started in April 1893, and in view of the experience with contractors on Cantref, they decided to complete the entire project using direct labour. The Board of Trade had sanctioned an extension of the railway from Cantref to the Beacons Reservoir site on 27 April 1893, and by June the new track had been laid, creating a railway that was long. By the autumn, a network of sidings and tracks had been completed, as had offices, a blacksmith's shop, a boiler house, workshops for carpenters, a fitting shop, a shed for the locomotives, a sawmill, some stables and a wagon shop. Much of the village was built using buildings which had previously been used on the Cantref project, and it included accommodation for 335 men, with housing for an additional 85 remaining at Cantref.
While the embankment with its clay core were being built, the corporation employed around 500 men, with some extracting stone from a quarry near Cefn Coed, others working at the Crawshay Brothers' clay pit excavating the puddle clay, and a number working on the railway, besides those working on the dam. February 1896 was a record month, when some 4,100 tons of clay were removed from the clay pit and transported to the dam. This traffic ceased at Christmas 1896, and completion of the details took place in the spring and summer of 1897. Impounding of the Taff Fawr began on 17 September, with a formal opening ceremony held on 30 September 1897. The capacity of the enlarged reservoir was .
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