Date: August 4th, 2018 Location: Scammonden, West Yorkshire
The Yorkshire Pennines, with their sweeping moorlands and dramatic valleys, hold a timeless quality. Yet, there’s one spot where the ancient landscape collides spectacularly with modern human ingenuity: Scammonden. Looking back at the photographs I captured on an early August evening in 2018, the unique character of this location—a crossroads of history, engineering, and stunning nature—is vividly apparent.
The Scenery: Golden Hour on the Moor
The Light: The sun, low in the sky, bathes the scene in a warm, amber glow. On a summer evening, particularly following what was a famously hot summer in 2018, this light is intensely beautiful, bringing out the deep, earthy tones of the heather and rough grasses that cover the hills.
The Landscape: You can sense the vastness of the exposed Pennine moorland—a land shaped by centuries of wind and rain. The slopes look rugged yet inviting, a perfect place for quiet reflection as the day cools down.
This area, high up on the backbone of England, offers a breath taking sense of isolation, a characteristic that makes its juxtaposition with the nearby motorway all the more striking.
The Modern Marvel: The M62 at Scammonden Dam
The M62, the vital trans-Pennine route, here performs one of its most impressive feats. Instead of a conventional bridge, the motorway runs along the crest of a massive structure known as the Scammonden Dam, which impounds the water to form Scammonden Reservoir (or Scammonden Water).
A World-Class Design: Completed in the early 1970s, this dam was the first in the world to carry a motorway along its crest, and remains the only one of its kind in Britain. It's a spectacular example of multi-purpose civil engineering, solving the problems of both crossing a deep valley and providing a much-needed water supply for Huddersfield.
The Viewpoint: Your pictures clearly show the elevated position of the motorway, giving an incredible vantage point for drivers and observers alike. The sheer scale of the cutting and the embankment is immense—a lasting monument to the ambition of the mid-20th-century road builders.
The faint streams of traffic in the images—perhaps captured with a slightly longer exposure as the light faded—represent the ceaseless flow of commerce and life connecting the East and West of the country, all happening atop this silent, earth-filled wall.
The Companion Reservoir: Booth Wood
Booth Wood's Role: Lying just north of the M62 and Scammonden, Booth Wood Reservoir is another important feature in this water-rich landscape, supplying water to Wakefield. Like its larger neighbour, it was completed around the same time, in 1971.
A Complex Water System: Looking out over Booth Wood, you get a sense of the complex network of reservoirs in this area, catching the water from the high moors and channelling it down to the towns and cities of West Yorkshire. It's a reminder that this scenic expanse is also a crucial utility landscape, quietly sustaining the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
A Village Beneath the Water
Perhaps the most fascinating detail of all lies beneath the surface of Scammonden Water. The reservoir's creation required a significant sacrifice: the valley floor was once home to the small village of Deanhead.
When the valley was flooded, most of the village's structures were demolished. However, the old Deanhead Church was spared and converted into what is now the local sailing club headquarters, sitting on the reservoir's edge—a tangible connection to the community that was displaced. Imagine the history held within the silent water, with the roar of the M62 overhead creating a truly unique historical contrast.
Scammonden is more than just a stop-off; it is a profound location that tells a story of:
Natural Beauty: The enduring wildness of the Pennines.
Human Endeavor: The audacity and scale of its civil engineering.
Lost History: The ghost of the village that sleeps beneath the dam.
Your photos from that August evening perfectly capture this three-part harmony. It's a place that commands attention, making you pause and appreciate the layers of life, nature, and engineering piled one atop the other.
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All the pictures remain the copyright of Colin Green.
