The drowned village under the reservoir?

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incomer_dave · #1 Post by **incomer_dave** » Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:00 pm

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.

OS_Trev · #2 Post by **OS_Trev** » Tue Jul 21, 2015 10:30 am

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.

Aldbourne_Annie · #3 Post by **Aldbourne_Annie** » Tue Jul 21, 2015 5:00 pm

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.

incomer_dave · #4 Post by **incomer_dave** » Wed Jul 22, 2015 9:30 am

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.