Reservoir waters covered 19th-century ‘throwback’
NEARLY 60 years on, haunting memories of how the historic Norden village of Greenbooth became submerged under millions of gallons of water have been revealed.
It was flooded in the early 1960s, after four years of construction, to create the last in a series of four reservoirs in the Naden Valley.
Today, Greenbooth Reservoir is an essential part of the beautiful countryside north of Heywood, visited by dog walkers, hikers and nature lovers.
The story of how the Heywood and Middleton Water Board’s proposals to flood the Naden Valley in the mid-1950s sounded the death knell for a declining village is well remembered by a handful of eyewitnesses to the times.
Greenbooth’s population had been shrinking for decades before the decision to flood it was taken. A ‘throwback to the 19th century’, it had been built around the local mill, and never had any electricity.
Terry Tomlinson, now 87, remembers how his family at Higher Red Lumb Farm – just up the valley from Greenbooth – served the lost village with milk.
In fact, his brother Peter, now 90, was still delivering milk in Norden until two years ago, when a couple of falls forced him into retirement.
Terry said: “We were at the farm from 1938 until 1947 and Peter and I have always lived in Norden. Half the people I knew were in Greenbooth.
“We would fill people’s jugs up with pints of milk and place a plate over the top and leave it for them.
“It was a lovely little village. Although people had started to leave, many that were left didn’t want to leave and surrender it to the reservoir. Their properties were subject to compulsory purchase.
“I suppose if we want to drink water, some places have to be flooded.”
Terry didn’t follow the family tradition of farming and become a stonemason, helping to build the offices for the company which constructed the reservoir, Mcalpine.
He wasn’t alone. Seamus O’donnell, now 81, was one of the hundreds of men hired to build the reservoir by the Mcalpine construction company.
From his home in County Mayo in the west of Ireland, he told the Manchester Evening News: “Work on the reservoir started in 1957. I joined in 1959 and was paid three shillings, 11 pence and a farthing an hour (20p in today’s money).
“That increased to five shillings, 11 pence (about 30p) and we got £1 for working in the tunnel because we needed good quality Wellington boots.
“I was a labourer and eventually got promotion to working on the pumps. I remember, we dug a trench 2,000ft long, 6ft wide and 200ft deep. They imported timber from Canada as props and they cut stone from a quarry in Ramsbottom to build the dam, using 36 stonemasons from Northern Ireland.
“We worked long and hard hours and I remember we used to drink in the White Lion on Edenfield Road after a hard day’s graft.”
Seamus vividly remembers the ‘big house’ built by the owner of the village mill, James Butterworth, being demolished before the village was flooded.
Seamus didn’t hang around after the reservoir project was complete. He went on to help construct the M6 motorway between Warrington, Preston and Lancaster before returning to his native Ireland.
There are few other people left in Norden who remember the village as it was.
One woman is the daughter of another local milkman. She did not wish to be named, but she said: “It was a typical little old village with no electricity and all the houses had outside toilets.
“It was one of those places where no one locked their doors. People would walk in with a milk can and we’d fill it up. Everyone looked after one another.
“I suppose you would call it very picturesque. They were hard-working people.
“It would’ve been nice if they had preserved the village as a kind of museum. It was a bit of a throwback to the 19th century, but I suppose people wanted better living standards.
“There was a village shop at the top of the square and the streets were cobbled. We all went to school with clogs on.”
The area was known as Green Booth when James Butterworth established a weaving mill there in the 1840s. Fed by local coal, it produced woollen flannel for clothing manufacturers across the north of England.
While it seems quaint and bucolic now, the ‘new’ village Butterworth established – which became known by the single word Greenbooth – was cutting edge for the time.
With rows of terraces, a little school, and bigger homes for managerial staff, Butterworth was providing accommodation and a community for his workers, with rent and milk money deducted straight from their wages.
This area had been, it’s believed, visited often in the mid-18th century by John Wesley, the famous founder of the Methodist Church, who stayed just up the hill and set up a chapel.
However there was no church, or pub, in the 19th century village of Greenbooth. And by 1911 it had lost its heart.
In that year the mill, by then under the control of Butterworth’s grandsons, went bust. With the keystone employer gone, locals began to drift away from the village’s 80 homes to find work.
The plans to submerge the valley it sat in were confirmed in 1955 and the village was finally empty not long after. When it was demolished there were 46 houses left in the village, 20 of which were derelict.
High cliffs were carved into the valley and trees were torn down during the construction of the reservoir, which cost more than £2m and provided some 700m gallons of water to Heywood.
The reservoir has a concrete foundation with a central core of watertight puddle clay, which was laid by workmen walking around on it and trampling it with the heels of their boots.
The reservoir, measuring 40 metres high and 300 metres long was completed in 1963, and officially opened in August 1965.
The Naden Valley contained three reservoirs (Naden Lower, Naden Middle and Naden Higher) which dated back to the 19th century, and the Greenbooth Reservoir would complete the series.
The fate of Greenbooth was not unique. The Rochdale villages of Watergrove (1938) and Cowm (1968) were also submerged beneath reservoirs.