66 report — 1877. 



On the South-Lancashire Wells. By T. Mellard Beade, C.E., F.G.S. 



As a member of the Committee I have devoted considerable time to obtain- 

 ing information on the subject we are engaged in investigating, especially as 

 regards South Lancashire ; I have exhausted the information available to me 

 through the means of your printed forms of inquiry. Much more ought to 

 be obtainable ; but companies undertaking the supply of districts are, perhaps 

 naturally, jealous of giving answers which they imagine may boused to their 

 detriment at some future time. 



Having collected all the answers to the queries of the Committee, I next 

 attempted to analyze them, with a view of ascertaining whether I could help 

 the Committee further by a digest of the, to some extent, crude facts and 

 statements relative to the district I am more immediately acquainted with. 



In doing this I was met by the difficulty of reducing the replies to one 

 common datum for comparison. With existing wells there are only a few in 

 which the quantity pumped, the variations in the supply, and correct analyses 

 of the water from time to time are taken and recorded with the scientific 

 exactness which would enable me to draw deductions having the force of 

 demonstration. 



So far as I am able I purpose now to present for your consideration the 

 facts and my deductions therefrom, arranged with the object of enabling you 

 to test for yourselves their relative importance. 



The area of the country over which my information extends (and here I 

 must acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. G. H. Morton, F.G.S., who has 

 kindly placed at my disposal all the valuable facts in his possession relating to 

 Liverpool and Cheshire wells) includes in Lancashire the Triassic rocks lying 

 between the south and south-western borders of the Lancashire coalfield, 

 and the shores of the Mersey and of the Irish Sea as far north as South port. 

 In Cheshire the area occupied by the wells of which I have any reliable in- 

 formation lies within a radius of 5 miles from Liverpool. 



For the purposes of comparison, however, although there are outlying wells 

 which I shall have to refer to, there are three nuclei or centres about which 

 the most important systems of wells are grouped, viz. Liverpool, Birkenhead, 

 and Widnes. These " systems " I have shown on (wo sheets of vertical sec- 

 tions annexed to this report (Plate II.), reduced with as much accuracy as was 

 available to a common datum, on which I have shown the extreme variation of 

 level of water in each well produced by pumping. As regards seasonal varia- 

 tion it will have to be treated separately. 



I have also shown on the 6-inch Ordnance Surveys, coloured geologically, 

 the position of each well in the Liverpool and Widnes Systems, and in other 

 cases have shown the position of the wells in the 1-inch scale Geological 

 Survey sheets. 



Widnes Wells. — With the exception of the town supply, these wells have 

 been sunk for manufacturing purposes. As a great chemical manufacturing 

 town, Widnes has been entirely created within the last 30 years *, and a 

 large supply of water is a necessity. 



Widnes occupies what I have shown to be the site of the old course of the 

 river Mersey t> a rock valley having a depth of 141 feet below Ordnance 

 datum, now filled up with glacial-marine drift*. It is through this drift, of 



* The first works were established by Mr. John McClellan in 1840, the second by Mr 

 Jolm Hutchinson in 1847. 



t Buried valley of the Mersey, PrOc. of Liverpool Gcol. Soc., Sess. 1871--. 





