This article is available in audio format, please click on the play icon below to listen. 

The construction of Lower Barden Reservoir by Bradford Corporation began in 1856, and before the building of the Upper Reservoir, which began in 1876, it was known as Barden Broad Park Reservoir.

The area comprising Barden Broad Park was enclosed within a former deer park wall which was built (or more likely re-built) in the 17th century at the time of Lady Anne Clifford. Within the deer park wall stood Barden Broad Park House, situated about a mile south-west of the former hunting lodge of Barden Tower, and was the home of the Gamekeeper to the Duke of Devonshire.

From the 1840’s the gamekeeper was Thomas Birch (1813-1903), who was appointed by the Duke of Devonshire in 1841. Later that year he married Eleanor Lister, and their seven sons and one daughter were all born at that remote habitation.

Plans to build the reservoir were approved by Parliament in 1854 but this meant that the old house would be lost under the embankment and Bradford Corporation were required to build a new gamekeeper’s house. It was subsequently built a third of a mile south of the old house and can be seen today on the path down towards the Lower Reservoir from Halton Height.

During the building of the Lower Reservoir, Thomas Birch had to contend not only with the construction work but also the presence of a temporary navvy village in the vicinity of his new home. This ramshackle collection of huts housed up to 400 men, many with their wives and children. The 1861 Census records 58 children living in ‘temporary huts on Barden Moor’, which housed not only navvies but also Engineers, Contractors, Stone Masons, Carpenters, Miners, Quarrymen, and Labourers. The huts were arranged on the hillside in informal streets named Inkerman, Balaclava, Regent Street, and Cheapside, and included three public houses ‘The Alma’, ‘The Park Tavern’, and the grandly named ‘Devonshire Arms Hotel’. The latter was described as made of ‘boards and old rafters, and the carcasses of two superannuated caravans’. There was also a Grocer’s Shop, run by David Lapish and his wife Martha, and a Preaching Room and Sunday School.

The photograph of Thomas Birch, proudly holding his shotgun, was taken in 1891 to commemorate 50 years as gamekeeper to the Duke of Devonshire. The group photograph was taken on the same day outside a thatched shooting hut known as ‘Brass Castle’. The hut is still situated just above the Lower Reservoir and will be familiar to walkers on the moor, although its roof is of a more modern construction covered with heather.

The men with him on that day were not gentry out on a shoot, but local farmers, tradesmen, and his contemporaries. Apart from Thomas Birch in the centre, one of his sons, William Birch, a farmer of Eastby (1846-1926) is standing first left. He had married Elizabeth Anne Parker, daughter of William Parker of The Heugh, Eastby, in 1877, and had taken over the farm. Next to him is his clean-shaven brother-in-law Willie Lister of Intake Farm, Embsay (1853-1916), who had married William Parker’s younger daughter Jane in 1876. Front left with a dark moustache is Stephen Birch (1862-1934), youngest son of Thomas Birch, who continued as Gamekeeper to the Duke of Devonshire after his father’s death.

The group photograph repays further examination. All the men are wearing hats, including flat caps, bowlers, deerstalkers, and even two trilbies. Most of the younger men have moustaches, whilst the middle-aged men have beards. Thomas Birch, who was 78, has a fringe of beard around his face and no moustache, rather like the other older man lower right, probably representing a style from an earlier period. Only Willie Lister and the two younger men, first and third lower left, are clean-shaven.

Thomas Birch and his family continued to live at Barden Broad Park House throughout the construction of both reservoirs, and his only daughter Eleanor married one of the engineers, Alexander Malcolm, a Scotsman, in 1881. Thomas himself lived well beyond the completion of both reservoirs, dying at Barden Broad Park House on 26th October 1903 aged 90. He was buried in Bolton Abbey Priory Churchyard with his wife Eleanor who had died in 1895.

Photographs courtesy of Andrea Lister of Canada, a descendant of the Lister’s of Intake Farm, Embsay, and Elizabeth Mason of Hessle near Hull, a descendant of the Parker’s of The Heugh, Eastby.

David Turner, Embsay with Eastby Historical Research Group