Mangla Headworks Upper Jhelum Canal | Canal | Reservoir| Stone Commemorate | Pakistan | Mangla Dam
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Mangla Headworks were constructed from 1912-1915 and formally opened by his excellency Baron Hardinge of Pensurst PC Viceroy and Governor General Of India on the 9th of December 1915.
The Stone Commemorate Building of these headworks is a piece of Art which attracts visitors from all over the country.
Actual work on the canal regulator began early in 1913 and proceeded at a reasonable pace until April 1914, when an unseen natural dam broke somewhere in the upper reach of the Jhelum, sending a large wall of water crashing down the river. The flood burst through the embankment raised to protect the masonry from the river, potentially causing severe damage. It was just as well that it resulted only in delaying construction.
In the spring of 1916, the first waters flowed into the Upper Jhelum Canal to completely change the face of district Gujrat. From a land of small pockets of cultivation strung along narrow inundation canals abutting the Jhelum and Chenab rivers, the district became a prosperous cereal growing region by the mid-1920s.
Benton’s remarkable canal head that worked without a barrage on the Jhelum continued to flow for 50 years, accruing immense agricultural wealth to the country it slaked. Then came the damming of the river at Mangla in the mid-1960s with a rubble-filled wall, cutting off flow to the headworks and, in turn, killing the canal.
That was, fortunately, not the demise of the Upper Jhelum Canal. It only meant that the magnificent stone and masonry headworks and its massive gates were no longer needed. A canal taking off from the newly formed lake was excavated to join the old one at the village of Bong some ways downstream. And consequently, the headworks and 13 kilometres of the old canal fell into disuse.
One would have expected the handsome architecture of the headworks to have been pulled down and its steel fixtures put to other use. Thankfully, it has not. And so it remains: a priceless architectural showpiece to educate future generations of civil engineers.
Meanwhile, the Upper Jhelum Canal continues to flow across acre after acre of wheat and paddy fields, thickets of acacia and shisham and lush vegetable patches in Mandi Bahauddin and Gujrat districts that owe their fertility to this waterway. To gauge the measure of the man behind the feat, Sir John Benton did not so much as leave a plaque with his name and remains unknown to those who continue to benefit from his commitment to turn his vision into reality.
Mangla Headworks were constructed from 1912-1915 and formally opened by his excellency Baron Hardinge of Pensurst PC Viceroy and Governor General Of India on the 9th of December 1915.
The Stone Commemorate Building of these headworks is a piece of Art which attracts visitors from all over the country.
Actual work on the canal regulator began early in 1913 and proceeded at a reasonable pace until April 1914, when an unseen natural dam broke somewhere in the upper reach of the Jhelum, sending a large wall of water crashing down the river. The flood burst through the embankment raised to protect the masonry from the river, potentially causing severe damage. It was just as well that it resulted only in delaying construction.
In the spring of 1916, the first waters flowed into the Upper Jhelum Canal to completely change the face of district Gujrat. From a land of small pockets of cultivation strung along narrow inundation canals abutting the Jhelum and Chenab rivers, the district became a prosperous cereal growing region by the mid-1920s.
Benton’s remarkable canal head that worked without a barrage on the Jhelum continued to flow for 50 years, accruing immense agricultural wealth to the country it slaked. Then came the damming of the river at Mangla in the mid-1960s with a rubble-filled wall, cutting off flow to the headworks and, in turn, killing the canal.
That was, fortunately, not the demise of the Upper Jhelum Canal. It only meant that the magnificent stone and masonry headworks and its massive gates were no longer needed. A canal taking off from the newly formed lake was excavated to join the old one at the village of Bong some ways downstream. And consequently, the headworks and 13 kilometres of the old canal fell into disuse.
One would have expected the handsome architecture of the headworks to have been pulled down and its steel fixtures put to other use. Thankfully, it has not. And so it remains: a priceless architectural showpiece to educate future generations of civil engineers.
Meanwhile, the Upper Jhelum Canal continues to flow across acre after acre of wheat and paddy fields, thickets of acacia and shisham and lush vegetable patches in Mandi Bahauddin and Gujrat districts that owe their fertility to this waterway. To gauge the measure of the man behind the feat, Sir John Benton did not so much as leave a plaque with his name and remains unknown to those who continue to benefit from his commitment to turn his vision into reality.
4 سال پیش
در تاریخ 1399/03/18 منتشر شده
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