Rosemary (Share My Garden) wrote about her visit to Tyneham, a village in Dorset abandoned in the Second World War because it was in an area needed for military training. The residents never returned.
She also remembered, as a child, picking gooseberries in the garden of a house in a village abandoned to the rising waters of a new reservoir.
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| Mardale Green |
It reminded me of a passage in ‘Fellwalking With Wainwright’, which has haunted me since I bought the book in 1985. I think of it often. Oh to be able to write like Wainwright.
I will never go to Mardale Head now without thinking of a summer’s day more than forty years ago when I walked over Gatescarth Pass and saw the valley of Mardale for the first time. It was a lovely vista. The floor of the dale was a fresh green strath shadowed by fine trees and deeply inurned between shaggy heights; beyond, receding in the distance, was Haweswater, then a natural lake. It was a peaceful scene, the seclusion of the valley being emphasised by its surround of rough mountains. Mardale was a bright jewel in the dark crown .... I remember that day so well. Many early memories have faded, but not that one. Down in the valley, I went along the lane to the Dun Bull between walls splashed with lichens and draped with ivy. There was no welcome for me at the inn, which for centuries had been a meeting place for farmers and shepherds and the scene of many festive gatherings. It was empty, unoccupied. Around the corner was the small church amongst fine yews: it was a ghostly shell, the interior having been dismantled and the bodies in the graveyard exhumed and reburied elsewhere. The nearby vicarage and a few cottages were deserted and abandoned. This was the hamlet of Mardale Green, delightfully situated in the lee of a wooded hill, but now under sentence of death. Birds trittered in the trees and my footsteps echoed as I walked along the lane but there was no other sound, no sign of life. Even the sheep had gone. There were wild roses in fragrant hedgerows, foxgloves and harebells and wood anemones and primroses in the fields and under the trees, all cheerfully enjoying the warmth and sunshine; but there would be no other summers for them: they were doomed ... Manchester Corporation had taken over the valley and built a great dam. The lake would be submerged beneath a new water level a hundred feet higher. Already the impounded waters were creeping up the valley. Soon the hamlet of Mardale Green would be drowned: the church, the inn, the cottages, and the flowers, would all disappear, sunk without trace, and its history and traditions be forgotten. The flood was coming and it would fill the valley. Nature’s plan for Mardale would be over-rules. Manchester had other plans, to transform Mardale into a great Haweswater Reservoir. And no doubt be very proud of their achievement ... I climbed out of the valley to Kidsty Pike. Looking back at Mardale Green from a distance, its buildings no longer seeming forlorn but cosily encompassed by trees and its silent pastures dappled by sunlight, I thought I had never seen a more beautiful picture. Nor a sadder one.
It is very haunting and poignantly beautiful. I once walked past him at Windermere train station. A great man and writer. " Scafell Pike and back before breakfast ".
ReplyDeleteJust a stroll for him. We once stayed in a cottage at Kentmere where there was a video of him walking the Kentmere Round with Hunter Davies.
DeleteI know of Hunter Davies. You hear stories of people saying the church bells still ring some times in these flooded villages and town lands. Right. I will have a pint of what they've had.
DeleteYes, great writing. Well planned too, he sets the scene and then two thirds in tells you of the fate that lies waiting for Mardale Head. I have his book on the Coast to Coast walk. My aunt gave it to me with the inscription that if I didn’t ever get to do the walk she hoped I would enjoy reading about the land. Jean in Winnipeg.
ReplyDeleteHe knew what he was doing. I like his timing in using the ugly word "Manchester". I think he first visited Mardale in 1930. Sometimes the walls reappear when the reservoir level is low.
DeleteInteresting to read that the walls are glimpsed when the reservoir is low. It makes you think of other hidden worlds that have been submerged by water like Doggerland that occasionally give up their secrets. Jean
DeleteThe East Yorkshire coast and other counties to the south have lost of these villages lost to the North Sea.
DeleteIndeed that was a lovely, heartfelt piece of writing delivered by a man who was so passionate about nature and The Lake District in particular. Was Manchester Corporation run by would-be ventriloquists? I deduced this from: "Manchester Corporation had taken over the valley and guilt a great dam".
ReplyDeleteEdited and cut hight. Hag a gottle o'geer.
DeleteI believe he wrote about Mardale several times. A great loss of a lovely valley in the name of "progress".
The people I was living with at the time took me to visit Tyneham shortly after I arrived in UK - the people never returned because they were not allowed to. To this day it remains a training ground / firing range for the armed forces. They can make short forays for memorial services at the church and were permitted to bury former residents in the churchyard there. It too is a strange sad place. I have been here 30 years and through to go back at Easter this year on a visit to Dorset but I suspect its charm had faded further and I should stick to the Jurassic coast walk. (I get what you say about the writing on Mardale.)
ReplyDeleteRosemary's pictures of Tyneham capture it now. In all these places, I find myself thinking of those who grew up, played and lived there.
DeleteAll things change, but some change faster than others. What would Wainwright think of his lakes and fells now?
ReplyDeleteHe walked them in the days when you could walk all day and not see another soul. I often found that too in the 1970s. He would be dismayed by some of the crowds now on popular routes such as Helvellyn, many of them poorly-equipped idiots who have no idea how easily trouble can turn up.
DeleteWilliam Wordsworth made similar comments when the railway brought tourists to the Lakes. John Betjeman complained about the coach coming down the M5 to his beloved haunts.
ReplyDeleteJust wait until we get our Polytunnel Tours travel business off operational. Our first destination will be West Cork with six 45-seater coaches.
DeleteIt was very sad that loss of a whole village to a dam. The memories under water, the church bells ringing ghostlike.
ReplyDeleteIt must have been wonderful to have been Wainwright walking the empty landscape, his books were very popular not so long agp.
I had a lot of walks like that in the 1970s.
DeleteThe original Wainwright books are a little esoteric, but the one I have with the photographs is wonderful.
Evocative writing from Wainwright. Sadly, I know of no similar records of the communities that were lost in the creation of Kielder reservoir in Northumberland.
ReplyDeleteThere must be indicators in the old newspapers and census records, but if there were no photographs there would have been less interest.
DeleteKielder isn't very old. I was living in Newcastle when the plan went to Parliament and then it went ahead. There wasn't a great deal of fuss as I remember it. I took the local daily newspaper each day. Perhaps it really was the perfect place for it. If you have large populations you need to collect water for them. You can't have your cake and eat it.
DeleteAs I recall, much of the justification for Kielder was water for the Tees-side chemical industry, now just a memory. However, it does mean that the North East rarely has summer hosepipe bans.
DeleteI believe that they even pump water down to the Leeds-Bradford-Huddersfield area during periods of extreme drought.
DeleteHello, I’m a regular reader of your blog but have never commented before. I love that passage, it’s the most evocative exquisite piece of writing and I cried when I read it for the first time, many years ago now. If you haven’t read it, I’d recommend ‘A Pennine Journey’ a long distance walk by Wainwright in 1938 as war was looming. I loved how he simply knocked on doors along the way to enquire if there was a room for the night and travelled with the bare essentials. Thanks for reminding me again of this beautiful piece of writing. Best, Petra
ReplyDeleteHello Petra, and thank you for commenting. I think Wainwright at his best is every bit as good as Laurie Lee. The Pennine Journey book sounds wonderful, especially for someone from Yorkshire.
DeleteBeautiful writing and such a pleasure to read.
ReplyDeleteIt truly is. I think of it every time I spot the book on the shelf.
DeleteWainwright's descriptions were very moving. We have the Kinzua Dam here, and deep below the reservoir there are towns. Wainwright's descriptions were very moving. You know, in the last decade, we had a very bad drought, and the water levels dropped to some of the lowest levels since the dam was built in the 1960s, and in places you could see street signs marking the where roads used to be. Foundations. The people came back to stand on the shore and stare out at their past, seeing things that had been hidden for 50 years.
ReplyDeleteThat happens with low water levels here as well, but most of the reservoirs are approaching or more than 100 years old now, so no one remembers living in the drowned villages that reappear. It must be very moving with more recent dams to be able to see landmarks and the walls and buildings you once knew.
DeleteMy parents used to walk in the Lake District from the late '20s and mentioned the valley 'pre-Haweswater' and would never go to there.
ReplyDeleteIt must have been idyllic. The grainy photographs seem to show that.
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