Milngavie Reservoirs were built by Glasgow Corporation in two main phases during the 19th century to solve a long standing problem with water supply to the city, and to provide an abundant source of clean water, piped from Loch Katrine to the north. By the early 19th century, Glasgow's growing population and industries had outgrown the old pump wells and city streams (Burnet 1869). Water-filtration and supply schemes devised from 1806 to the 1840s only partially worked, and contaminated drinking water from the Clyde was a root cause of high urban death rates and cholera outbreaks in 1832, 1848 and 1853.
Amidst growing concern and split support for rival schemes, Glasgow's Lord Provost, Robert Stewart (1810-1866), drove forward a solution - a municipally-owned water supply scheme, authorised by Act of Parliament in 1855, and overseen by leading engineer, John Frederic La Trobe Bateman (1810-1889). Having already reported Loch Katrine as the only viable source, Bateman supervised the construction of a gravitational system from Loch Katrine to Glasgow in 1855-59 that involved a 35 mile system of dams, sluices, tunnels and aqueducts, a collecting reservoir at Milngavie (Mugdock Reservoir), and newly rearranged pipework within the city itself.
Formally opened by Queen Victoria in 1859, and operational by 1860, the Loch Katrine Water Works were hailed as a major feat of engineering, paving the way for massively improved public health and hygiene, living standards, industrial growth and success. Bateman himself described the supply scheme as 'indestructible as the hills through which it has been carried', and surpassing the 'nine famous aqueducts which fed the City of Rome' (Bateman 1860, quoted in Gossman 2015: 53-54). His reference to the scheme as among Glasgow's 'works of ornament and usefulness' shows that the aesthetic of the scheme was important from the outset, something that is also evident in the high quality and detailing of the architecture associated with both the reservoir landscape, and the Loch Katrine route in its entirety (Muylle and RCAHMS 2007).
Batemen went on to become one of the world's most eminent water engineers. In Scotland, he was consulted for schemes for Edinburgh, Perth and Forfar, and after Glasgow, he went on to design water supply systems elsewhere in the UK, Europe and Asia. Although not the earliest gravitational scheme in the UK, the Loch Katrine scheme predated the completion of the major upland reservoir supply schemes for the main industrial centres of England, including Thirlmere for Manchester (also by Bateman in 1878), Lake Vyrnwy for Liverpool (1879) and the Elan Reservoirs for Birmingham (1892).
The Loch Katrine Water Works were also a badge of civic pride. The health-giving properties of a permanent fresh supply of water chimed with the improving ethos of the public park movement and the works became a powerful symbol of moral governance and commitment to civic progress (Maver 1998; 2000). Celebrated and promoted through public ceremony, photographic commissions from Thomas Annan (1859 and 1877), written accounts, (e.g. Glasgow Corporation 1914) and Glasgow's Great Exhibitions, (Glasgow Corporation 1938), the Water Works became the showpiece of Glasgow Corporation at the height of its municipal power – promoted as tangible proof that urban squalor and disease could be overcome, and justification for the immense costs involved.
As with some of the major English schemes (Roberts 2006), the powerful narrative thread that emerged through much of the literature and ceremonial events, including the royal inauguration of 1859, was that of pure crystalline waters drawn from 'wild and romantic regions' (Burnet 1869: 149). This was a concept of landscape already familiar from the literary association of Loch Katrine with Sir Walter Scott's best-selling epic poem of 1810, The Lady of the Lake, and was further reinforced in a more enduring way in Glasgow through the unveiling of the Stewart Memorial Fountain in Kelvingrove Park in 1872. Designed to commemorate the establishment of the water supply as one of the city's greatest civic achievements, it was suitably decorated with symbolic bas-relief representations of Loch Katrine, Glasgow and the Lady of the Lake (LB32213).
The second phase of works by Glasgow Corporation, overseen by the water engineer, James Morrison Gale (1830-1902), responded to growing demand for water during the second half of the 19th century. After the completion of the initial scheme, incremental expansion took place, but from 1885, a further Act of Parliament authorised the building of a second aqueduct, new tunnels and a second reservoir at Milngavie. This greatly increased the amount of water that could be stored and supplied, trebling the original capacity for delivering 20 million gallons per day. The building of Craigmaddie Reservoir at Milngavie proved hard-going and took 11 years to build, with badly fissured rock requiring deep excavation works, a clay-puddle lining, and a high embankment measuring over 1450 metres by 28 metres. The pivotal role of James Morrison Gale, who had also assisted Bateman during the initial scheme, was commemorated in 1904 by a memorial and fountain by the Old Treatment Works (see under architectural features).
The physical transformation of the landscape north of Milngavie in the mid and later 19th century was a response to both the technical specifics of the civil engineering project, and the emergence of the Water Works as a potent symbol of moral civic government. In carving out the reservoirs from the former agricultural landscape of Barrachan farm, Glasgow Corporation went beyond engineering function to create what was, in effect, a highly structured Victorian public park that conveyed social order and the ideology of improvement. From the 1850s to the early decades of the 20th century, the workmen installed not only the necessary reservoirs, valves, pump houses and pipework, but also laid out a landscape where public space was formalised through specific entrance-ways, circuits of paths, public conveniences, ornamental architecture, avenues of trees and manicured garden areas. Repeating lines of trees and shrubs, and matching gates, gatepiers and railings, added to a sense of visual unity and sense of order (Ordnance Survey editions, published 1898 and 1918). The more ornamented gauge basins worked as eye-catchers, drawing attention to the exact places where the clean Loch Katrine water flowed into the reservoirs. The classical flourishes, including the pedimented architrave, reinforced the magnitude of the engineering achievement, as described by Bateman in 1860 when he commended the works as indestructible and comparable to those of antiquity.
With all the hallmarks of urban public pleasure grounds, Milngavie Reservoirs was increasingly used and valued as such, with the reservoirs themselves as the outstanding and dominant scenic elements, fringed by maturing trees. Unlike other reservoirs in more remote upland areas in Scotland, Milngavie Reservoirs was on the doorstep of Britain's 'second city', and within easy reach by road and rail. The rail link from Glasgow had been operational since 1863 and was improved in the 1890s. In the words of one commentator of 1908, Milngavie Reservoirs became a 'sylvan retreat', the venue of 'numerous excursion parties from the City of Glasgow and elsewhere, and the resort of residents of the district when out for a stroll' (Milngavie 1930). Interestingly, this account, and other later descriptions drew attention to what was perceived as the 'natural beauty' of the designed landscape, making comparisons with coastal scenery, for example (Milngavie 1930: 35-6).
As the idea of leisure and recreation developed during the early part of the 20th century, Milngavie gave working-class Glaswegians a 'holiday', and images of the reservoirs were published as picture postcards. In 1955, the open nature of the reservoir landscape was described as 'a privilege much appreciated and seldom abused', while in the 1960s, 'hikers' and 'picnickers' came in their thousands by bus and train (quotes reproduced in McGowan 2009: 169).
The recreational value of Milngavie Reservoirs has endured, and in the early 21st century it continues to be a popular and publically accessible landscape, while also remaining an operational and important water treatment facility. Significant changes during the second half of the 20th century include the construction of additional buildings for treatment purposes at the Old Treatment Works and the abandonment of some former high maintenance garden areas. The re-organisation of local government in the 1970s and the 1990s meant that the works first became the responsibility of West of Scotland Water, before the merging of all the water authorities to form Scottish Water. In order to upgrade water treatment to meet UK and European quality standards, Scottish Water took forward the Katrine Water Project from around 2000 in what was then the largest water treatment programme in Scotland (Land Use Consultants 2006: 7). This involved the decommissioning of the former treatment works and the construction of a large, low-level building to the east of Barrachan from around 2004.