ICE - Institution of Civil Engineers - Virtual Library

Between 29 April and 2 May 2009 the British Dam Society hosted a tour of English dams and historic hydraulic structures by 43 members of the Association of Friends of the Hubert-Engels Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Applied Hydromechanics at Dresden University of Technology. The authors of this paper accompanied them on their tour.

The annual meeting (Committee Meetings and 77th Executive and Symposium) was held at the Brasilia Alvorada Hotel in Brasilia between 21 May 2009 and 24 May 2009. At the Executive Meeting Kenya was accepted as the 89th member country of ICOLD and the meeting was informed that Niger was applying to become the 90th member country.

This paper is based on a presentation made to the Institution of Civil Engineers' Panel for Historic Engineering Works and the British Dam Society in Glasgow on 11 March 2009. An earlier part of this paper discussed the reservoirs supplying the canals of the Lowlands (Brown D. H. Scottish canal reservoirs – a historical perspective. Part 1: Lowlands. Dams and Reservoirs, 2009, 19, No. 3, 111–118). This part discusses the Crinan canal and will be followed in a future issue by a short paper on the unusual reservoirs on the Caledonian canal.

British dam practice in the nineteenth century was dominated by the use of earth embankments. The theoretical approaches to masonry dam design developed in France in the mid-nineteenth century, although commented on by Rankine, therefore had little immediate impact on British practice. However, British engineers working overseas made more widespread use of masonry structures. Differing geological conditions, geography and cost all played their part, but the overall impression is one of innovation that at times astounded the UK engineering establishment. This paper chronicles the work of the pioneers of colonial dam design in the context of the history of masonry dams. The first part of this paper (Dams and Reservoirs, 2009, 19, No. 2, 55–66) described developments down to the introduction of the ‘rational method’; this part describes how dam design changed in the next 30 years.