Rake Brook Reservoir is a

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 ...

fed by two

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 ...

s, including the

eponymous An eponym is a noun after which or for which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. Adjectives derived from the word ''eponym'' include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''. Eponyms are commonly used for time periods, places, innovati ...

Rake Brook, a tributary of the

River Roddlesworth The River Roddlesworth (also known as Rocky Brook) is a river in Lancashire, England, a tributary of the River Darwen. Course The source of the river is on the slopes of Great Hill, just above the ruins known as ''Pimm's'', where the infant riv ...

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...

, England. The reservoir is adjacent to the two Roddlesworth Reservoirs. It was constructed in the 1850s by Thomas Hawksley for

Liverpool Corporation Waterworks Liverpool Corporation Waterworks and its successors have provided a public water supply and sewerage and sewage treatment services to the city of Liverpool, England. In 1625 water was obtained from a single well and delivered by cart, but as the ...

, and was designed to hold compensation water to maintain flows in the rivers, whereas the reservoirs at Lower Rivington, Upper Rivington and

Anglezarke Anglezarke is a sparsely populated civil parish in the Borough of Chorley in Lancashire, England. It is an agricultural area used for sheep farming and is also the site of reservoirs that were built to supply water to Liverpool. The area has a la ...

held water for the public water supply. Water from the reservoir was fed into Anglezarke reservoir by a channel called The Goit. Construction of the reservoir was authorised by an Act of Parliament obtained in 1847, and the engineer

Thomas Hawksley Thomas Hawksley ( – ) was an English civil engineer of the 19th century, particularly associated with early water supply and coal gas engineering projects. Hawksley was, with John Frederick Bateman, the leading British water engineer of the n ...

designed an earth dam which was tall at its highest point and long. The reservoir was finished in 1857, and impounded of water when full.

Bibliography

References

West Pennine Moors Reservoirs in Lancashire Geography of Chorley {{Lancashire-geo-stub