Last October I visited a Local History event in the village of Bradfield, Yorkshire. While I was there I took a walk up to the Dale Dyke Reservoir to have a look around at the site of one of the worst man made disasters of the British Industrial Age.
An information board tells the tale of how, on the night of 11 March 1864, the newly built dam failed during a storm and sent a wall of water pouring down the Loxley Valley into Sheffield killing hundreds of people and destroying everything in its path.
A small memorial has been erected.
The modern embankment completed about a decade after the original disaster a few hundred yards further up the valley.
I had never heard about this event until I started researching my Family History. There's a good reason that it's often referred to as the Forgotten Flood. Several of my own ancestors suffered the effects of the disaster but their stories were never passed on to my or my parents' generations so I only have the public records available today to describe their experiences. I shall be returning to Bradfield this coming weekend for the event marking the 150th anniversary of the Great Flood.
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