Sludge or Sludgy: mud or muddy.
Puddle: prepared clay, tempered to form a wall in a reservoir bank, or a lining to resist water.
Puddle-bank, Puddle-wall, and Puddle-dyke mean the same.
Culvert, Sewer, and Sough mean almost the same; an arched channel of stone or brick for water or refuse to pass through. The first belongs more properly to water-works; the two latter are synonyms applied to town drainage, "Sough" being Lancashire.
Shuttle, Sluice, Valve, Clough, Paddle: these five names are synonyms; they mean that portion of the apparatus which slides, or is drawn up and let down, to inclose or let out the water of an artificial stream or reservoir.
Swallow: the inner portion of the culvert, or the throat which leads from the inner side of the reservoir to the "shuttle," the outer portion being the supply-culvert.
Valve: an apparatus to retain or let out water, steam, &c. A valve may slide as the shuttle, paddle, or sluice must do; or it may rise with a spindle, vertically, as in the safety-valve of a steam boiler; or may move on spindles or a hinge, as in some large pumps; or be in the form of a ball, and play loose in a case, as in a fire-engine pump: there are other forms of valves. Throttle-valve, a valve fixed in the steam-pipe of an engine, to which the governor is attached, to throttle or reduce the supply of steam to the cylinder. In some engines, as the locomotive, there is no governor motion, and the throttle-valve is consequently used by hand.
Waste-pit: a vertical pit or well, leading from the "overflow" on the embankment into the supply; or, in this case, the "waste culvert."
Drawer: the man employed to draw water from the reservoir by raising the "shuttle."
Such is a brief explanation of some of the provincial and technical words used in the Holmefirth inquiry; and I think some of the readers of "N. & Q." will have a right to say that a process of desynonymising is required. So many names for the same thing, unless they are all understood, generally lead to confusion.