The engineer for the project was Thomas Hawksley, and the scheme, which included a bank of filters at Rivington and a 17.3-mile (27.8 km) pipeline to carry the water to Liverpool, was completed in 1857.

A search of the archives revealed that the engineer building the dam had encountered problems with springs, but had reported that they had been solved.

The bottom 7 feet (2.1 m) of the shaft were then filled with stones and gravel, while the rest of it was packed with puddle clay, and no subsequent subsidence occurred at that site.

[2] However, a similar problem occurred elsewhere on the dam in January 1908, when a hole approximately 4 feet (1.2 m) across appeared near to the puddle clay core.

Further problems occurred in January 1954, when the toe of the dam, which was formed of sand, was washed away as a result of heavy rainfall.