Title: Howden Dam Sledging - Peak District
Series: Idyll Range
Print: Mini Fine Art Print
Full colour UV resistant archival inks. Giclée digital print to quality paper.
Supplied: Framed in chunky, glass-fronted box frames
Print Size: 100mm square
Art Created: 2025
Artist: Si Homfray
Dambuster- Snow Sledging at Howden Dam, Ladybower.
Howden Dam was built between 1901 and 1912 by the Derwent Valley Water Board, bringing a huge engineering project to the heart of the Peak District. Its purpose was simple but ambitious: to provide a reliable supply of clean water for Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Derbyshire.
At its peak, more than 1,000 labourers worked on the construction. They lived in a temporary village built especially for them at Birchinlee, which quickly became known as “Tin Town” because of its corrugated iron buildings.
The dam itself is an extraordinary feat of engineering. Around 1.25 million tonnes of Derbyshire gritstone were quarried near Grindleford and transported to the site on a specially built railway. Howden Dam officially opened in 1912, while its sister dam, Derwent, was completed during the First World War and opened quietly, without a ceremony.
Together, the two dams created the foundations for the much larger Ladybower reservoir that followed. When Ladybower was completed, the villages of Derwent and Ashopton disappeared beneath the water — leaving a remarkable story of engineering, landscape and communities forever connected to the valley.