Mardale is a

glacial valley U-shaped valleys, also called trough valleys or glacial troughs, are formed by the process of glaciation. They are characteristic of mountain glaciation in particular. They have a characteristic U shape in cross-section, with steep, straight s ...

in the

Lake District The Lake District, also known as ''the Lakes'' or ''Lakeland'', is a mountainous region and National parks of the United Kingdom, national park in Cumbria, North West England. It is famous for its landscape, including its lakes, coast, and mou ...

, in northern

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. The valley used to have a hamlet at its head, called Mardale Green, but this village was submerged in the late 1930s when the water level of the valley's lake, Haweswater, was raised to form

Haweswater Reservoir Haweswater is a reservoir in the valley of Mardale, Cumbria in the Lake District, England. Work to raise the height of the original natural lake was started in 1929. It was controversially dammed after the UK Parliament passed a local act o ...

Manchester Corporation Manchester City Council is the local authority for the city of Manchester in Greater Manchester, England. Manchester has had an elected local authority since 1838, which has been reformed several times. Since 1974 the council has been a metropol ...

.The "lost village" of Mardale
BBC, November 2003. Retrieved 2013-01-01.Emergency water measures planned
BBC news website, 2003-11-11. Retrieved 2013-01-01.

Demolition

Most of the village's buildings were blown up by the

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is the engineering arm of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces ...

, who used them for demolition practice. The exception was the small church, which could accommodate only 75 people, and had an all-ticket congregation for its last service. It was then dismantled in April 1937, stone by stone, and the stones and windows were re-used to build the water take-off tower which is situated along the Western shore of the reservoir.The "lost village" of Mardale
BBC news website. 2010-07-15. Retrieved 2013-01-01. Some 97 sets of remains were disinterred from the churchyard and transferred to

Shap Shap is a village and civil parish located among fells and isolated dales in Westmorland and Furness, Cumbria, England. The village is in the historic county of Westmorland. The parish had a population of 1,221 in 2001, increasing slightly to ...

. The ruins of the

abandoned village An abandoned village is a village that has, for some reason, been deserted. In many countries, and throughout history, thousands of villages have been deserted for a variety of causes. Abandonment of villages is often related to epidemic, ...

occasionally reappear when the water level in the reservoir is low.

Alfred Wainwright Alfred Wainwright Order of the British Empire, MBE (17 January 1907 – 20 January 1991), who preferred to be known as A. Wainwright or A.W., was a British fellwalking, fellwalker, guidebook author and illustrator. His seven-volume ''Pictorial ...

protested bitterly about the loss of Mardale in his series of pictorial guides to the Lakeland fells, having first visited it in 1930, and still wrote of the “rape of Mardale” in his very last book. Others, however, praised the creation of a new and impressive mass of water, especially as viewed from the fells.

Dam and fell access

Despite his protests, Wainwright was impressed by the dimensions of the Mardale dam - 90ft in height; 1550ft in length - which he noted as the earliest hollow

buttress dam A buttress dam or hollow dam is a dam with a solid, water-tight upstream side that is supported at intervals on the downstream side by a series of buttresses A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which ...

in the world. In response to the submerging of the village, Manchester Corporation provided a new access road that runs for four miles along the south-eastern side of the reservoir to a car park at Gatescarth. From here ascents of the peaks surrounding the head of the valley, such as Harter Fell,

High Street High Street is a common street name for the primary business street of a city, town, or village, especially in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth. It implies that it is the focal point for business, especially shopping. It is also a metonym fo ...

and Kidsty Pike may be made.

Historical and literary associations

*A refugee from King John, Sir Hugh Hulme, settled in the valley in the early 13th C., and was popularly known as the King of Mardale. *

Letitia Elizabeth Landon Letitia Elizabeth Landon (14 August 1802 – 15 October 1838) was an English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L.E.L. Landon's writings are emblematic of the transition from Romanticism to Victorian literature. Her first major b ...

gives an emotional response to the remote grandeur of ''Mardale Head'' in her poetical illustration of that name, to an engraving of a painting by

Thomas Allom Thomas Allom (13 March 1804 – 21 October 1872) was an English architect, artist, and topographical view, topographical illustrator. He was a founding member of what became the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). He designed many bui ...

in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835. *Mardale featured as “Marrisdale” in Mrs Humphry Ward’s Victorian novel '' Robert Elsmere''; and was also described by her contemporary as a novelist,

Eliza Lynn Linton Eliza Lynn Linton (10 February 1822 – 14 July 1898) was the first female salaried journalist in Britain and the author of over 20 novels. Despite her path-breaking role as an independent woman, many of her essays took a strong anti-feminist s ...

: “seen in the calm of evening, with every mountain form repeated with tenfold force of line and colour in the black lake...it is something well worth travelling far to see”.G Lindop, ''A Literary Guide to the Lake District'' (London 1993) p. 33 *The flooding of Mardale is the subject of Sarah Hall's 2002 historical novel ''Haweswater'' (Faber, ). Hall's novel won the Commonwealth Writers First Book Award.

References

External links

Cumbria County History Trust: Shap
(nb: provisional research only – see Talk page) Valleys of Cumbria Former populated places in Cumbria Forcibly depopulated communities in the United Kingdom Westmorland and Furness {{Cumbria-geo-stub

Demolition

Dam and fell access

Historical and literary associations

See also

References

External links