Esneh Barrage
1909 'Another important stage has been completed in the beneficent work done by British engineers for the advancement of agriculture in the Nile Valley. The official inauguration by the Khedive, on Tuesday next, of the barrage across the Nile at Esneh, 643 miles from the Mediterranean Sea, will confer on the extensive Keneh province the great gain of perennial irrigation which has enabled two crops instead of one, cotton and sugar-cane in the summer instead of only the less profitable wheat and barley or cereals and vegetables in the winter, to be won from thousands of square miles of land in other parts of the fertile valley of the Nile. The Esneh Barrage differs from the Assouan Dam in its function and design ; the former is a complement to the latter. But to enable a thorough appreciation of the scheme to be formed it is necessary to briefly review the complete history of the irrigation works of the Nile Valley, with its great stretch of 780 miles of waterway, including the 130- mile length of Delta. ... The contract for the barrage was let, early in 1906, to Messrs. John Aird and Co., Westminster, who have been so closely identified with irrigation work in Egypt, and the manufacturing and fitting of all the mechanical appliances, including sluices, swing-bridge, lock-gates, &c., were entrusted to Messrs. Ransomes and Rapier, Limited, Ipswich.'. The article included information of the related work to increase the height of the Assouan Dam.[1]