The Wansdyke & District Forums

Someone at the pub told me there's a drowned village under one of the reservoirs round here, church spire and all, and that in a dry summer you can see the top of the steeple. Is this true, or is it one of those things people tell newcomers to wind them up? I half believe it and i half think i'm being had.

You are being half had. There genuinely are drowned villages in Britain; Derwent under Ladybower in the Peak District is the famous one, demolished and flooded for a reservoir in the 1940s, and yes its remains do show in droughts. But not here. We have no reservoir of that size on the downs; the geology is chalk and the water goes down, not across. The steeple-in-the-water story attaches itself to almost every body of water in England sooner or later. It is a true story that has gone wandering and settled where it does not belong.

Trevor is right that we have no drowned village, but the story is older and stranger than the reservoirs, Dave, do not dismiss it too fast. Long before anyone dammed a valley, people told of bells ringing under water, under lakes and meres and out under the sea: the bells of churches swallowed for the wickedness of folk who would not heed a warning. Lyonesse off Cornwall, the lost land out in Cardigan Bay. The reservoir version is just the newest coat on a very old story. We do love to imagine a whole world carrying on just out of reach, under the water, ringing its bells where we cannot get to it.

ok that's equal parts reassuring and deeply unsettling Annie, thank you. a whole world carrying on just out of reach is going to keep me up tonight. no drowned steeple then, but i'm oddly disappointed.