NI Water would like to acknowledge its partners in this project.

Mourne Wall Power Station Watertown Cut off trench shafts

The Silent Valley Scheme Map of Watertown Watertown Stage 02 1923-1933 Construction of Silent Valley, an impounding storage reservoir, Mr. Luke Livingston Macassey, Consultant Civil • Built on the western side of the valley along the with a capacity of 3,000 million gallons (13620 million litres). Engineer, who was local to , was 1 “Back Road”. asked in 1891 by the City and District Water • Many workers were local - carpenters, electricians, Commissioners (BCDWC) to find a future source of plumbers, engineers. The dam cut off trench water for Belfast. He recommended the Mournes with a • Home to 600-700 people, it developed into a well • In an earth filled dam a cut off trench is required supply drawn from the and Rivers and planned small pioneering town. below the dam to prevent water from seeping under a storage reservoir to be built later in the Silent Valley. the dam and undermining it. The Mournes were chosen because of the quantity of • A total of over 2,000 people lived here. water available and its purity. • Wooden houses held accommodation - houses for • Two critical problems were encountered during the families, foremen and dormitories for single men. At excavation of the dam trench at Silent Valley: Mr. Frederick William McCullough, Chief Engineer 2 the end of the construction the houses in ‘Watertown’ (1) the subsoil was unstable wet silt to BCDWC, drew up the design for Silent Valley 3 4 were sold off. Reservoir, but died before it was completed. Later Mr. (2) the solid bedrock which was originally hoped to McCullough’s son, Mr. Richard Hamilton McCullough, • Women kept lodgers, eg Mrs Collins housed 12 men be found at 15m, was not found until a maximum This project was part-funded through Tourism 5 also became Chief Engineer to the BCDWC. who slept in one room. depth of 60m was reached. The initial tests hit Northern Ireland’s Tourism Development Scheme. • Women made porridge, left it outside overnight and large boulders which were found to have been The European Agricultural Fund for Rural 6 Stage 01 1893-1905 cut it into slices for the workers lunch or “piece” as it brought from Scottish glaciations. Development: Europe investing in rural areas. The 7 Rural Development Programme 2007 - 2013 was part Purchase 9,000 acres (3,600 ha) of “water catchment area” in was known. • Sir Ernest Moir, the Senior Director for Pearson Ltd., the and build a 22 mile (35km) boundary wall. decided to dig the trench by working in compressed financed by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural 8 • A small hospital with a doctor and a nurse catered for 9 Development and the Department of Agriculture and the sick. air. The contract was renegotiated and work Divert water from Kilkeel and Annalong Rivers and convey continued. Rural Development. it 35 miles (57km), via conduits, tunnels and pipelines to a 10 • A recreation hall accommodated dances, boxing, new holding reservoir at Knockbracken, near Belfast. 11 12 snooker competitions and acted as a “silent movie” • Shafts, lined with cast iron, were sunk into the ground Northern Ireland Water 13 11m apart by working in compressed air. Using the 14 cinema. PO Box 1026, Belfast, BT1 9DJ The shafts the water was then pumped out from the • Hugh Fitzsimons was the manager of the social club waterlogged silt. The shafts were connected by a Email: [email protected] In 1904 work began on the building of the famous in Watertown and his son Benny grew up there with trench which was then filled with concrete. Mourne Wall to define the boundary of the 9,000 acres most of his brothers and his sister. Waterline: 03457 440088 1. Quarry 8. Offices • A specially made air lock “the Gazoon” was used to (3,600 ha) catchment area. It stands 3m high and 1m 2. Steam Turbines 9. Narrow Gauge Railway • Shops ranged from grocery and hardware to boot de-climatise the men from compressed air and so Text Phone: 03457 440088 wide, stretching for 22 miles (35km) and runs over the (Electricity Generators) line to Annalong mender. avoid “the bends”. 17 peaks in the Mourne mountains. www.niwater.com 3. Inspection Pits for 10. Workers’ Houses • A blue van, the “Tin Lizzie” would take people to • Work was carried out during April to October Steam Engines 11. Tennis Court Kilkeel on Fridays and Saturdays for any extra stocks Northern Ireland Water is a trademark providing employment to men in the area skilled in 4. Pug Mill where puddling 12. Shops they needed. of Northern Ireland Water Limited, the granite cutting craft. clay was ground-up 13. Recreation Hall • Supplies of fresh milk, provided daily, Kathleen incorporated in Northern Ireland, • Work finished in 1922 taking 18 years to build. It is 5. Platforms for trains 14. Original Entrance Rooney rode her bicycle strapped with two big cans Registered Number NI054463. said to be, “a monument to the skill of the men who 6. Workshops of milk. Registered Office: Westland House, built it.” 7. Narrow Gauge Railway • A generator provided the first street lights in Ireland • The wall is a listed monument. up to Quarry - original vacuum lamps. Old Westland Road, Belfast, BT14 6TE Life and Times at Silent Valley

The embankment Stage 03 1949-1958 Quotes from the workers of the Bignian Tunnel Reservoir Build 4km tunnel - Slieve Bignian Tunnel - through Slieve I remember my father left home in Ballykeel at 4.30am Above the dam trench, a watertight corewall of Bignian Mountain to divert the water from the Annalong In 1954, 5km upstream from Silent Valley, work started “puddle clay” was painstakingly built up layer by River into Silent Valley. each morning to cycle 4 miles to the “Valley” gates. on a new reservoir and took 3 years to complete. layer to prevent seepage of water through the dam. They were all on a day shift, so for 6 months a year Unlike Silent Valley, it had a core of mass concrete Build Ben Crom Reservoir further upstream of Silent Valley. the only time they saw daylight was on a Sunday. The embankment slopes were then completed with and huge boulders and was founded on solid rock. Robert Newell “graded rockfill”, soil and grass layered on top, with It is known as gravity dam i.e. it depends on its weight a granite block surface to the reservoir side. Bignian Tunnel A great attraction to work on the tunnel was that the for stability. pay was around half a crown an hour which was 3 pence • The tunnel linking Annalong River with the Silent more than local quarrying work paid. Although some of Valley Reservoir through Bignian Mountain, took 4 us stuck with the job for its entire duration, many men Deaths during The workers had a sense of purpose and pride in their years to build, using power drills and simple chisels. only stayed a few weeks or even days, unable to put up jobs and a few nicknames tell the story: the Construction • It is 4km long, 2m high and 2.4m in width. with the heavy work and awful conditions. John Burden - ‘Johnny the Hut’ built himself a lamp • It can carry up to 90 million gallons (409 million Sandy Heaney (Shift Boss) of Silent Valley shaped like a hut to light his way home through the litres) of water per day into Silent Valley. mountains after dark. I put the first hole that brought daylight between the two 1. Hugh Quinn • The tunnel was built by Messrs A.M. Carmichael, sides. I drilled that hole...there was about an inch and a 2. William Forsythe Jimmy McKibben - ‘The Clay Hog’ worked as a “clay Edinburgh. Two assistant BCDWC engineers half between mine and the hole from the other side. puddler” on the embankment wall. This involved 3. George Phillips who worked on the Bignian Tunnel were Harold Willy Davy (Shift Boss) marching up and down pressing the air bubbles out McCaughan and Norman Ervine. Two groups worked 4. Jimmy Baines of sticky clay to make it waterproof. Men were issued towards the tunnel’s completion, working from I didn’t stand in to the siding when the first shot went 5. Sam Cooke with a pint of linseed oil per day to prevent their boots either side of the mountain: one from Annalong, off and I was blown this way and that...all over the place. sticking in the clay. The blast force was tremendous. By God I stood into the 6. Michael (Mick) Synnott was killed in 1925 when the the other from Silent Valley. They met in the middle, steam-crane he was driving overturned. Mick pushed side the next time. Dozer Nolan - ‘Dozer’ worked as a “nipper” on the only 5cm apart. his workmate out the side of the crane, saving his life. steam engines, he once wired a chap’s tin tea mug Bobby Davy (Spanner) • Sam McMurray’s job was to record the levels of the up to a live cable for a joke. 7. John Cousins died walking between two stationary contour lines of the surrounding land from Silent Even an hour after the blast you could hardly see or wagons when a locomotive moved them. Dan Dooley - the crane driver who set records for Valley to Dunnywater. This determined the height breathe for the “stour”. We were spitting diesel and 8. John Murphy was killed in August 1929 (18 years) his speed and skill at working the steam excavator. of the two tunnel mouths. dynamite for weeks. The only fresh air you got was in a tunnel collapse. • At the tunnel mouth near the head of the Valley what came down the tunnel. Constable Lawless - kept law and order. an electric pump ran to keep the works from Tom Newell (Electrician) being flooded. Construction of Ben Crom About half way in we ran into flowing sand. It was 9. Jim Moore unbelievable... who’d have thought in the middle of a mountain you’d have found running sand? That was a major set back that was to hold us up by 6 months. Harold McCaughan (Engineer)