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1864 - The Sheffield Flood
In 1864, 700,000,000 gallons of water flooded down
from Bradfield reservoir into Sheffield, causing the greatest
disaster that England had ever seen.
The water cascaded down the eight miles from the reservoir
to Sheffield at midnight on 11 March while most people were
asleep in their beds.
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It killed 270 people,
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destroyed 798 homes and
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flooded another 4,357.
Devastation after the flood
The Sheffield Water Works Company had just completed the
Dale Dyke dam on the reservoir, which was nearly full. At
10pm that night a dam worker was leaving when he noticed a
crack in the dam wall. He told the chief engineer, John Gunson,
who set about trying to lower the level of water in the dam,
but it had little effect.
An hour later the dam breached and John Gunson scrambled
up the embankment and out of the path of the wall of water
that rushed down the valley. The houses around Kelham Island
and Green Lane suffered the worst of the destruction.
Contemporary map showing the course of the flood
A total of 77 flood victims were buried in the cemetery in
this year. The cemetery is also the resting-place of John
Gunson, the chief engineer and Samuel Harrison, who wrote
the first account of the disaster. It is thanks to Samuel
Harrison that we have the vivid eye-witness accounts of the
flood that exist.
John Gunson |
