Another Sheffield thing - just a small one this time, but it's got a few nice bits to make it worth posting, I think. This is the end part of a surface water drain, possibly combined at some point with a stream called the Wybourne - although it's hard to be sure as the '-bourne' bit refers to an intermittent or seasonal stream, which therefore makes it hard to track on old maps, particularly once its course has been taken underground.
I've put together some shoddy amateur CAD of the layout to help it make some kind of sense beyond the pics and by description.
I'll start the report from the outfall end. This section is corrugated pipe that inclines towards a small chamber with a ladder. The corrugated pipe helps maintain traction underfoot, and there's a handy rope half way up too, if you don't mind getting wet hands.
Looking back down...
After the chamber it's brick for a short bit, before it unexpectedly emerges into the open. Maps don't clearly show an open section here so this was unexpected and I crept out slowly, unsure of what I was going to find to what I was going to end up in the middle of.
The outside bit turned out to be a T shape junction with high walls, on the site of a scrap yard above. From this pipe the left turn goes nowhere, whilst the right turn heads into another length of RCP.
I can't work out what purpose this open section serves, or did serve. It's possible that it has something to do with whatever was here before it became a scrapyard. Perhaps the old works above utilised the water in this section? Old maps don't label the works above (the nearest thing labelled are some 'Bone Mills' further along) so that's not much help either...
Looking back from this bit...
Another short section of RCP led into this next chamber, where I was pleased to find an old penstock still in position. (I checked it was secure by trying to give it a wiggle before I went under but it's secured in place).
Again, I'm not sure what the purpose of the penstock is in here. Well, obviously it's intended to stop the water flow, but why? There's nowhere else to direct it to and in heavy rainfall, if the penstock was down, this chamber would surely just fill up and back up down the double pipes?
I hung around in this bit taking pics for a while, enjoying the self-imposed solitary confinement, whilst deciding what to do next. The two pipes heading further into the distance looked uninvitingly small, definitely requiring a crawl...
After considering ditching it here and coming back another time with the others, the sound of running water in the distance got the better of me and I ended up crawling down the pipe to the right (you can see here that the one on the left wasn't particularly appealing, and the one on the right wasn't much better). The middle bit was a bit of a squeeze as half a split-metal manhole lid had got wedged in the pipe, but I was soon out the other end (what I later realised was on the other side of the canal above) into another small chamber - this was narrow but tall, with some nice colours...
Water pissed at some force from a concrete pipe about 10ft above, kind of confirming the stream assumption. I did climb the ladder to have a peek inside but shining my torch down it seemed to go on forever, so I left it here. It's possible there's more further along from here, but I think it's unlikely...
You can see the other half of the split lid still in this chamber - the pipe on the left is the one I crawled out of.
And back the way I came. All in all, worthy of an hour of my time, and glad I eventually investigated what I'd overlooked a while back. Apols for the overly detailed writeup of something that’s pretty small but its cathartic, and sharing = caring ;-)
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