Burley in Wharfedale Weir
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- Joined: Sat 21 Jul, 2007 7:30 am
It is in LS29, does secret leeds cover B in W?If you like puzzles and old structures take a trip to the weir there.A debate rages on the stepping stones that aren't stepping stones, they are there to control the water and they want to build a bridge there.The weir fed water to Greenholme Mills along a goit system, it was one of the first to be run on electricity, hydro electricity. The weir steps the river down something like 6 metres, I wonder what the river looked like before the weir; natural waterfall or was the bed built up upstram or reduced down stream? How do you think the weir would have been constructed back in 1790
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Perhaps.... or did they temporarily divert the river? along the ditch marked my the line of trees on the north bank, there is evidence of some sort dam wall where the trees finish.... Where can I see a map dated earlier than 1790 so I can see the run of the river before the weir was built, would such a thing exist?The banks have been raised upstream of the weir by approx 2.4m, the weir boards used to consist of one board approx 0.6m high with another on sacraficial iron pegs 0.6m above that, designed to fall flat if the pressure from the water got too great. This dam obviously raised water levels upstream and lowered them down stream, but it's the huge difference between the levels of the river bed above and below that intrigues me.I'm trying to figure out how it would have been before the weir was built; a natural waterfall? or did the river take a different route altogether?
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- Location: Burley in Wharfedale
Re: Burley in Wharfedale Weir
Greenholme - Burley in Wharfedale
The original weir was built of timber.
According to the account of Henry Whitaker (son of Jonas Whitaker, one of the original partners who built Greenholme Mills) in his diary printed in 1889 - "I well remember the old weir at Greenholme. The top or upper part of was made of strong planking, and this was propped by substantially-made beams. Over this planking the water fell a distance of 3 or 4 feet on to an inclined stone platform, which sloped down to a square wooden sill made of strong balks, and extended across the river. From these balks there was a drop of about a foot or eighteen inches into a deep pool."
The description by Henry Whitaker of the original timber weir suggests that it wasn't as high as the current stone one. (It also begs the question if it was located at the same place).
There are two maps by "Jefferys" - one of 1771 & one of 1775. On the page link above, I've shown the 1775 map.
There is no marked loop of the river shown at Greenholme.
(How accurate the maps are when referring to the surveying of rivers is open to conjecture).
I'm wondering if the first mill was built on the existing (1790) river channel, the river was then canalised (i.e. the goit) & raised embankments with a timber weir were then constructed upstream to make use of an old river channel (i.e. the loop) to act as an overflow channel (now the current river alignment).