Tuesday 11 May 2010

drowned villages

I was thinking about ghost towns and suddenly became curious as to whether there are any places in Britain that fall into that category. There aren't really any large-scale examples here but there are quite a lot of abandoned villages, among them settlements that were drowned as a result of the construction of reservoirs. As it happens, there are examples very near to Sheffield. When the Ladybower Reservoir was built in the late 30s and early 40s, the villages of Derwent and Ashopton were evacuated and flooded. (The wikipedia entry for the former is here and the latter here - they are actually quite helpful.) Apparently, the buildings of Derwent occasionally become visible when the water-level is low but Ashopton never reappears out of the water. It occurs to me that, if you were interested in doing something site-specific over here, an event at the site of the drowned village might be quite exciting. I thought I'd illustrate this post with an image of the overflow at Ladybower - it looks rather dramatic, I think.

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