Dan y Dwr tells the story of Capel Celyn, a small Welsh-speaking community in the Tryweryn Valley of North Wales that is submerged beneath the Llyn Celyn reservoir. The reservoir was constructed in the 1960s to supply Liverpool and Wirral with more water. Liverpool already sourced its water from Wales through Lake Vyrnwy but as the city’s population and industry continued to grow, Liverpool required more water. I understand the practical argument behind the decision; cities need water as populations grow and Governments and Councils have to respond to those demands. What is difficult to understand was how the British Government could justify drowning an entire community to meet the needs of a city across the border, simply because its larger population was considered more important. As Mike Benbrough so plainly puts it in the documentary “The priority was given to the urban environment, about 70 people being displaced, what’s that compared with progress”.

 I wanted my film to challenge this idea by making it clear that those 70 people represented more than a small number of lives sitting on the other side of border. As I came to understand through my research, they were families whose connections to the village extended across generations, their homes, chapel and school were part of a long history, identity and carried sense of belonging. The flooding also submerged a centuries old grave yard, meaning that the remains of generations who had lived and died there still remain beneath the reservoir. I found this particularly poignant: although the physical community could be moved, the people’s connection to the valley remains. This idea is reflected in the closing words of the film, when Aeron Prysor-Jones says, “we’re not finished with the valley yet”. For me, this became significant to the wider argument of the documentary.

I first discovered the story of Capel Celyn during a conversation with friends last year. I was surprised by how little I knew about an event that had taken place less than 40 miles from where I live and about a place whose water literally comes through my kitchen tap. The realisation that something so close to home and so significant to Welsh political and cultural identity was entirely unfamiliar to me became the starting point for the film. I wanted to understand why this story had remained so distant from my own understanding of Wales and whether a documentary could bring it to a wider audience.