Water is inherently beautiful and desirable.
A reservoir can be a spectacular focus for a park design. Islamic tank-reservoirs were always used for recreation. The first English reservoir to be considered from the aesthetic and functional points of view was Wingerworth in Derbyshire. Humphry Repton proposed a multiï¾purpose lake, which was not built:
It very rarely happens, that an object of beauty or taste can also be made an object of profit; but, at Wingerworth, the same surface covered by water, may be more profitable than the richest pasture, because it may be so managed as to admit of being occasionally drawn down two or three feet to supply canals, and other circumstances of advantage, in this populous the commercial part of the kingdom; exclusive of the increased supply of fish, where such food is in constant requisition. For this reason, I do not hesitate in recommending the piece of water already mentioned, which forms so striking a feature in the view from the house, and of which the effect will not be less striking, when viewed from the ground near its shores (Loudon 1840: 464).
The lake was part of a landscape scheme for the whole estate, composed according to principles derived from the great landscape painters. It is obvious that reservoirs should be treated creatively: water is inherently beautiful and desirable.
