At risk of replacement by concrete
Photo: Butterley reservoir spillway by Steve Partridge
Grade II-listed, 1891, T. & C. Hawksley & Co.
Resembling an immense staircase, this reservoir spillway is one of our most unusual endangered buildings. It was designed to allow the release of excess water during periods of heavy rain and is the UK’s only listed spillway. The current owner, Yorkshire Water, plans to remove its steps and replace the sandstone walls with coloured concrete. Its case is that the spillway does not comply with current safety standards, but the kind of flooding it seeks to manage is determined by theoretical assessment and may occur only once in 20,000 years.The ‘upgrading’ work will result in the loss of everything that is special about the spillway: coloured concrete, for instance, is not an adequate substitute for natural stone. Villagers and visitors have formed a campaign to help protect the spillway. Yorkshire Water should listen to them and develop a plan which is less damaging to this unique example of Victorian engineering
Status Update / March 2026
In 2017, a heritage assessment was undertaken by Wessex Archaeology on behalf of Yorkshire Water to support an appeal against a negative planning decision. The appeal was successful and subsequently planning permission and listed building consent were granted for significant modifications to the slipway. The sweeping stepped terraces, evoking the classical tradition in garden design, were covered in concrete, with some justification made for this on the basis that, technically speaking, the slipway was ‘preserved’, both beneath the concrete and in the photographs captured of the site.