The Claerwen dam 2
Concrete dressed as stone
Claerwen dam,
March 2000
(far right)
Powys
County Archives
It is a measure of its size that the Claerwen dam was to create a reservoir which holds almost as much water as the combined total of the three earlier dams
built
in the neighbouring Elan Valley. The new dam is 184 ft (56 m)
high and 1167 ft (355 m) long.The Claerwen dam was designed to be in keeping with the appearance of the much older structures nearby. Although built in concrete, the huge dam was faced with dressed stone at considerable extra cost in materials and labour. By the late 1940’s it was necessary to employ over a hundred skilled stonemasons from Italy because most skilled British workers were employed on restoration work on the Houses of Parliament in London at the time.
in full spate
(right)
Unlike the much earlier dams in the
Elan Valley, which needed an extensive network of railway lines
to carry materials to the dam sites, the Claerwen used road transport
only. Most of the building supplies were brought from the railway
at Rhayader, because the tracks built for the construction of
the first dams had long since been dismantled.Queen Elizabeth
at the opening
of the Claerwen dam
in 1952
(far right)
Photograph by
kind permission of
Radnorshire Museum,
Llandrindod Wells
The construction of the Claerwen dam, the last of the dams
in the 
district, took six years,
using a workforce of 470. The improved techniques and mechanisation
of large-scale civil engineering projects meant that large numbers
of manual workers were no longer needed.
The Claerwen dam was ceremonially declared open by the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth (right) in October 1952, in one of the first official engagements of her reign.
This is the second page of the two pages on the Claerwen dam.
