The works used precipitation tanks, and a 3 ft (914 mm) gauge tramway was built, to facilitate the movement of materials around the site.

Over the next hundred years, seven ships were used to transport the sludge, including one borrowed from Glasgow after another hit a mine and sank.

A second deep level sewer, started in 1911, eventually reached the works in 1928, and to cope with the increased flows, half of the sewage was fed into a new Activated Sludge plant.

In order to meet demands for better water quality, a pilot Biostyr plant was built in 1992, and a much larger one was completed in 1998.

Innovation continued, with the commissioning of the world's largest thermal hydrolysis plant in 2013, using a new process to break down sludge, which generates methane as a by-product, enabling the site to be self-sufficient for gas and electricity.

The city of Manchester experienced rapid growth during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the existing administrative bodies were not equipped to deal with such expansion.

A petition to create such a council for Manchester was organised by two industrialists, Richard Cobden and Thomas Potter, but this was resisted by both the Court Leet and the Police Commissioners, who stood to lose some of their powers.

However, the period also saw the introduction of the water closet, the forerunner of the modern flush toilet, and this resulted in much larger volumes of effluent entering the system.

The council tried to limit their use to public buildings and the homes of the rich, as the waste was discharged in an untreated state into the rivers, which were becoming grossly polluted.

When the first sewer reached Davyhulme, further progress was impeded by the Manchester Ship Canal, then being built, and the site became the location of the sewage treatment works.

[3] Manchester Corporation bought 98.84 acres (40.00 ha) of land at Davyhulme from the landowner, Sir Humphrey Francis de Trafford.

The construction work was managed by the City Surveyor, and used direct labour, with a contract for the machinery being awarded to Manlove, Alliott & Co. Ltd.

Barningham had previously supplied equipment to the Corporation for a light railway on Carrington Moss for the Cleansing Department.

The Corporation also paid the Ship Canal company to construct Davyhulme Wharf, which would enable coal and chemicals to be delivered to the site.

[7] Consideration was given to discharging the effluent into the tidal River Mersey, by construction of a culvert to Randall's sluices, near Warrington, or treating it by the use of septic tanks and double-contact bacteria beds.

The bacteria beds were filled with a media of coke or granite chippings, around which microbes formed a slimy film.

Extra land was bought from Barton and Irwell Rural District Council, on condition that the works treated sewage from the local area.

[14] Scientific analysis of the effluent flowing into the works had been carried out since the first laboratory was built, and effort had also been expended on trying to improve the treatment process.

Gilbert Fowler, who had been the Consulting Chemist since 1904, went to America in 1912 where H W Clarke of the Massachusetts Board of Health was conducting experiments on the oxidation of aerated waste water by micro organisms.

They lowered the light levels, as sunlight often triggered the growth of algae, and kept the precipitant floc, which contained many bacteria, from one experiment to the next.

[16] A small Activated Sludge Plant was constructed on the site in 1916, one of the septic tanks was converted between 1918 and 1921 to provide a larger test bed, and a permanent installation was built at Withington Sewage Works, in south Manchester.

[17] A second main intercepting sewer, which would link various districts in southern Manchester to Davyhulme had been authorised by Act of Parliament in 1911, and construction began soon afterwards, but it took years to complete.

The process was more efficient than the bacteria bed system, covering a much smaller area for the same volumes of sewage, and being largely automatic, used a lot less labour.

[25] After a public enquiry held at Manchester Town Hall on 23 August 1955, plans for the second Activated Sludge plant were finally approved.

Because of the proximity of the M60 motorway and the risk that deep excavations might damage it, seven of the final settling tanks were built above ground.

Effluent from the Activated Sludge plant was raised up to the level of the tanks by screw pumps, and the increased hydraulic head improved their performance.

Construction of the Mersey Valley Regional Sludge Pipeline began, linking Oldham to Davyhulme, and continuing to Sandon Dock in Liverpool.

Davyhulme was able to treat sludge from a number of other sewage works to the east, and pump the digested product to Liverpool.

[30] A campaign to improve water quality in the ship canal and the Mersey Basin began in 1985, which had implications for the treatment works.

The National Rivers Authority set limits on the volumes of Biological Oxygen, suspended solids and ammonia in any effluent discharged in water courses.