Dam Fine View - Pinkery Reservoir Event Cache

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Hidden : Friday, August 1, 2014
Difficulty:
1 out of 5
Terrain:
3 out of 5

Size: Size: other (other)

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Geocache Description:

This cache has been created to get people into the great wildernesses of the United Kingdom.

Dam Fine View - Pinkery Reservoir
This event has been created to allow individuals to attend this unique location, and have a Geo-natter, next to what we all take for granted - water.
GC57G5N
Dam Fine View - Pinkery Reservoir
Pinkery Reservoir		 Pinkworthy Pond (pronounced Pinkery) is an artificial lake, formed by damming the headwaters of the River Barle. John Knight dammed up the headwaters of the Barle... making a reservoir some seven acres in extent and some thirty feet in depth at its lower end. The work of dam construction and the associated 'canal', was carried out by two hundred Irish labourers. There is no record, nor any tradition, for the purpose of this stored water. It has been said that it is was obvious that the so called 'canal' was intended for the conveyance of water from the pond but the use to which the water was to be put remains uncertain, and was probably not a source of water power, but possibly the the pond and canal were constructed to provide irrigation water for the stretch of land from Pinkery Farm to Honeymead. The present area of the pond is about 1.2 hectares (2.9 acres) and was never the seven acres stated by Orwin. The pond is drained by removing wooden plugs in two 12 inch pipes placed in the dam wall. It has been emptied twice, once in 1889, when the body of a Parracombe farmer, Richard Gammin, was recovered, and secondly in 1913 in the course of an unsuccessful search for a suspected suicide, after which the pipes were replugged and it was refilled. The overflow from the pond is via a rock-cut tunnel through the southeast end of the dam into the River Barle. There is a length of embanked ditch (similar in construction to the 'canal') running down the southern half of the eastern side of the pond. Its purpose is not clear. It (along with some similar embanked ditch between the dam and the start of the 'canal' but, if this was the case, it was not completed. It is still not clear why the pond was constructed. It does not appear to have been for irrigation purposes in association with the 'canal' or for water power to work an incline on a proposed railway from Porlock Weir to Simonsbath as suggested by some, others suggest that one of the theories why John Knight took the trouble to make the pond was 'because he wanted to have a lake on his estate'. The name of the pond is shown as Pinkery Pond on the 1890 1:2500 Ordnance Survey map but this was changed to Pinkworthy Pond on the revision of 1904. The pond was formed by a large dam across valley at head of River Barle.
Cache Information Please come along between 1100am and 1130am on Friday 1st August 2014 and meet us on the embankment..

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