History

During the Industrial Revolution, Birmingham, like many other British cities, witnessed a significant population surge as people migrated from rural areas to urban centres in search of employment opportunities.

Despite having three rivers, Birmingham’s water supply was insufficient to meet the growing demand for clean drinking water and prevent the spread of waterborne diseases like cholera and typhoid. A solution was urgently needed to address this public health crisis.

“Wells or Wales” was the newspaper headline at the time. Birmingham Corporation elected to build a series of dams in the Elan Valley to supply fresh drinking water to Birmingham. There are three main reasons why they chose the Elan and Claerwen Valleys:

– 1836mm of rain on average per year, compared to Birmingham’s 660mm.

– Glaciated landscapes with deep wide valleys, made from impermeable mudstone, perfect to store water.

– The Foel Tower (where water is extracted by Garreg Ddu dam) is 52m above Frankley Reservoir, which means it can travel entirely by gravity.

An Act of Parliament was passed in 1892 which allowed Birmingham Corporation to buy the 72 square miles of the Elan and Claerwen Valleys, with work starting the following year in 1893.

A hundred occupants of the Elan Valley had to move with only the landowners receiving compensation payments. Numerous buildings were demolished, including the country houses Cwm Elan and Nantgwyllt, and forty-four properties in total – eighteen farms, a school, and a church, which was later replaced by the corporation as Nantgwyllt Church. To support the construction, a railway line was built to transport workers and vast quantities of building materials daily. A temporary village of wooden huts was erected to accommodate the majority of workers on the site of today’s Elan Village.

The first phase saw four and a half dams built: Caban Coch, Garreg Ddu, Pen y Garreg and Craig Goch in the Elan Valley and the foundations of Dol y Mynach in the Claerwen Valley. This was completed in July 1904 and opened by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra.

The construction of the second phase dams was delayed by the First World War. Work started in 1946 and advances in engineering meant that one large dam could be built instead of three smaller ones. Built in six years, Claerwen Dam was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in October 1952 in her first engagement in Wales.

The area around the Visitor Centre was originally a workshop (if you look up while you’re in the exhibition hall and gift shop, you’ll notice the original pulleys and chains). It opened as a Visitor Centre in 1985, was extended in 1997 and renovated in 2020.