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Mardale History - drought of 1984

In the spring and summer drought of 1984, probably the most severe it was said, for a hundred years, the Haweswater reservoir was drawn down further than it had been since its construction. On the 23rd July the water level was over 37 feet below normal and was falling at the rate of about three feet a week. Less than a million gallons a day was flowing in, as against eighty million going out. A wide white band of bare rock and stones surrounded the whole lake, giving the valley a devastated look. As the waters receded, the remains of the old Mardale were revealed.

All parts of Cumbria showed the effects of the prolonged absence of rain. The fellsides were parched yellow, in the valleys the trees, in dark green leaf, stood out against the pale coloured background. Streams which in living memory had never ceased to flow, dried up, and small tarns in the high hills disappeared. Lake levels fell even where their water was not used for supply purposes and Thirlmere looked half empty and desolate. The Water Authority, perhaps in the belief that rain in the Lake District could not be long delayed, postponed restrictions until the end of June. Then the more extravagant uses were forbidden and every economy urged. By that time Haweswater was well down. The most primitive and secluded dale, the most charming and restful to be found in all Lakeland, wrote Councillor Hinchcliffe of Manchester, describing Mardale in 1921, at a time when only the discerning visitor penetrated into the valley.

In this summer of 1984 it was all very different. There is a strange fascination in the re-emergence of a drowned village and as soon as this happened in Mardale the valley became a place of pilgrimage. Television crews arrived to film the scene and interview former inhabitants of Mardale now living in the surrounding villages. National newspapers published pictures and carried articles; there were reports and reminiscences on radio. As the water receded even further, there came a different flood of cars and people, numbering thousands daily. The narrow road to the dale head was jammed with traffic and the limited turning space at the road end became blocked. Ice cream and hotdog vans added to the chaos. The police were finally obliged to close the road and then to control the numbers allowed in the area. Many people, having had to leave their cars far from Mardale Green, walked unaccustomed miles along the road; other more sturdy walkers came over the fells to look down from more peaceful vantage points to the exposed valley floor.

The Drowned  Village.

Many who came by the road stopped at its highest point to go through the little gate on to Whiteacre Crag. Here there is a fine viewpoint, but this summer it has looked down on a drained valley floor where the ruins of Mardale have lain like a dismembered skeleton. The boundary walls of the tracks and fields have remained largely intact, but all the former buildings are now heaps of stones.

From this viewpoint, Wood Howe, in normal conditions Haweswater's only island showing only a small treed crown, now revealed that it was set upon the broad base of a cone, stark and white. No longer an island, the gulls which had made it their home had flown before the human invasion; they continued to complain loudly at the disturbance. Beyond Wood Howe is the afforested peninsula of the Rigg, and curving round its base the dale road. On the valley floor were the remains, only just distinguishable, of the Dun Bull Inn. Harter Fell stood

dramatically at the dale head, with the shoulder of Branstree on the left and Mardale III Bell, partially screened by Riggindale's Crags, on the right. Leaving Whiteacre Crag and going a little further along the road, at another small gate near Hopgill Beck, is the beginning of the footpath to Mardale Head.

Many visitors have gone down the steep bracken hillside here to the bare stony bed of the reservoir, clambering over the heaps of stones which were once the farms of Goosemire and Grove Brae. Chapel Hill Bridge, built in the seventeenth century, was the only easily recognisable feature. The soft mud and silt which lay, at first, in a deep film over the tracks and bridge, became in the days of hot sunshine and under the tramp of thousands of feet, a surface as hard and smooth as in the days before the flood. Beyond the bridge at the foot of the shingly slope of Wood Howe were the remains of the church, the low piles of stones emphasising how tiny the building was. There were to be seen the stumps of the ancient yews which it is said predated the church and rose higher than its little tower. Across the road from the church was the rubble of the buildings which clustered on Chapel Hill, the little track which wound among them clearly discernable, and here again the sawn butts of the great trees which had sheltered the dwellings.

Before the Flood

There is no doubt that Mardale was an unspoilt and beautiful valley before the building of the dam. The valley was approached by a narrow twisting road from Bampton, with the slopes of Burnbanks rising gently on the right and the steep craggy mountainside of Naddle Forest across the valley. The pastoral shore of the natural lake, Hawes Water, was just ahead, with stepping stones at the river's outflow. The lake was 2 miles long, almost divided into two parts by the delta which had been formed over the millennia by the Measand Beck. The smaller and eastern end of the lake was known as Low Water and the western end, beyond Measand, High Water. The narrow connecting isthmus was called The Straights.

The road ran on the west side of the lake following the curving shoreline, providing lovely views across the water to Mardale Common and the dramatic mountains of the dale head. The valley road was bordered with blackthorn, hawthorn, mountain ash, willow, gorse and broom, bramble and wild raspberries.

The wayside banks grew primroses and violets, bluebells and meadowsweet; in summer there were foxgloves and wild roses. Where at Measand the road cut across the peninsula, on the right was Measand Hall standing among great sycamores, near it were the earthworks of a prehistoric fort and, across Measand Bridge, Sandhill and other buildings. Green meadows, stonewalled, sloped down to the lake. All are now gone. The artist Heaton Cooper wrote of a visit to Measand in his book THE LAKES, I don't know whether it was the exceptional beauty of those still autumn days or the knowledge that, in a few years' time, this valley would be under water, that gave our stay at Measand a poignancy that can still affect me over forty years later. He spoke affectionately of Measand Falls that come down in two tiers with several cascades between steep rocky islands open to the sun and sky. This scene, at least, still remains, as the falls are above the reservoir level; spectacular after heavy rain, they are easily seen from the public road on the other side of the reservoir.

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