Craighall Reservoir, known locally as Craighall Dam, is one of a number of small

reservoir A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation. Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...

s, situated around

Neilston Neilston (, , ) is a village and List of civil parishes in Scotland, parish in East Renfrewshire in the west central Lowlands of Scotland. It is in the River Levern, Levern Valley, southwest of Barrhead, the last remaining town in greater Glas ...

East Renfrewshire East Renfrewshire (; ) is one of 32 council areas of Scotland. It was formed in 1996, as a successor to the Eastwood (district), Eastwood district of the Strathclyde region. The northeastern part of the council area is close to Glasgow and ma ...

, Scotland. The reservoir is located on the western slopes of Neilston Pad and has a number of well maintained public access paths. As of August 2020 it has an area of . The reservoir was constructed in 1817 to store flood water that would ensure a constant supply of water to bleach works situated on Kirkton Burn. The reservoir flows into Craig Burn, a small

stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a strea ...

which runs along the western side of Neilston Pad, past Craig o' Neilston farm before joining Kirkton Burn. It first appeared on

Ordnance Survey The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see Artillery, ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of ...

maps in 1856. The reservoir is owned by Elderslie Estates.

Features

The remains of a stone

boathouse A boathouse (or a boat house) is a building especially designed for the storage of boats, normally smaller craft for sports or leisure use. describing the facilities These are typically located on open water, such as on a river. Often the boats ...

and small jetty are situated on the western embankment. The period of their construction is unknown. During the 1980s the reservoir was drained and remained empty for a number of years. During this period a number of trees grew in the basin and when it was re-filled the trees became a noticeable characteristic poking through the surface of the water.

Forestry

In 1995 the reservoir was a central focal point in the

Community Woodland project carried out by Elderslie Estates. The project seen thousands of trees planted around the reservoir creating vast

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with woody plants (trees and shrubs), or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the '' plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunli ...

. In 2019 up to 20,000 of the trees were felled to prevent the spread of

phytophthora ramorum ''Phytophthora ramorum'' is the oomycete known to cause the disease sudden oak death (SOD). The disease kills oak and other species of trees and has had devastating effects on the oak populations in California and Oregon, as well as being present ...

– a fungus-like pathogen that can kill or severely damage larch trees. The felling damaged and disturbed a number of well utilised walking and access routes to the reservoir, most notably on the western side. Although many routes have reappeared the lack of protection from the woodland has caused the ground to retain much more water than it previously did resulting in some areas of marshland and in some cases small bodies of water.

References

{{reflist Reservoirs in Scotland East Renfrewshire