Project to revive waterfall
26 August 2010
A waterfall created by one of Yorkshire's finest horticulturists is flowing again after years of dereliction, following a three-year restoration project.
Sir William Milner, who as a founding member and director of the Northern Horticultural Society was instrumental in setting up what is now RHS Garden Harlow Carr, made the waterfall by damming a beck flowing through fields behind his home at Parcevall Hall in the Yorkshire Dales. It was one of many fine features he created in the spectacular 9.7 hectare (24 acre) formal and woodland gardens he developed over more than thirty years, now widely acclaimed as among the most beautiful gardens in northern England.
However the waterfall fell silent in the 1970s, when the dam started to leak and the pond was drained. A new dam was built in 2007, but it took another three years before funding was found for the full restoration of the waterfall. Now, 50 years since Sir William's death, local dry stone waller Philip Dolphin has recreated the cascade in weathered millstone grit, its naturalistic design reflecting the rugged beauty of the Yorkshire Dales National Park which surrounds it.