The Village Beneath The Dam

honeyplanet - it's very likely that the rubble was the ruins of Derwent Hall. You should also have noticed a single arched stone bridge which originally spanned the river.

The biggest pile of stone which becomes visible during draughts is the remains of the church tower, blown up - as mentioned elsewhere on here - to deter 'tourists' from trying to get into and up it.

From the few photographs available, it seems that the villages of Derwent and Ashopton were beautiful, idylic typically english little hamlets.

Fortunately, I also believe the reservoirs are equally beautiful, albeit in their own way.

The Time Flyers programme Plain Talker mentions was by far the best programme ever made on the history of the dams, their walls and the sunken villages.

That's a wonderful and atmospheric picture, ousetunes, of the viaduct, glowering over the remains of the village.

thanks for sharing it with us. ( l love to see old photos like that one)

Sorry to sound dumb, (yeah, yeah it's bit of a "blonde moment", here, I'm afraid !) but does that viaduct still exist, then?? Iis it part of the structure of the dam or is it also "lost to the waters"? (I ask because, obviously, the angle/ positioning of of the picture is in no way what can be seen today:- the vantage point is gone forever, and a different angle can make all the difference to the subject of a picture being recognised)

PT

Originally posted by Plain Talker

That's a wonderful and atmospheric picture, ousetunes, of the viaduct, glowering over the remains of the village.

thanks for sharing it with us. ( l love to see old photos like that one)

Sorry to sound dumb, (yeah, yeah it's bit of a "blonde moment", here, I'm afraid !) but does that viaduct still exist, then?? Iis it part of the structure of the dam or is it also "lost to the waters"? (I ask because, obviously, the angle/ positioning of of the picture is in no way what can be seen today:- the vantage point is gone forever, and a different angle can make all the difference to the subject of a picture being recognised)

edit to add, it probably would have been 1995 when the vilage was visible, because there was a strong drought that year. I remember the drought of 76, and the excitement of the news that the drowned villages had emerged from the waters then, too.

Ah! Drat it! I hit "Quote" instead of "Edit" more "blonde" moments ! Sorry!

PT

Apparently, the remains of the hall's walled garden can be traced as an exceptionally large outline quite a distance from where the hall was. My mother-in-law and father-in-law used to regail me with stories of their cycle trips from Sheffield to Derwent Hall - hostel - in the nineteen forties.

There is a bridge at the top of the reservoirs at Slippery Stones which used to stand in the village.

sort of on topic

does anybody know anything about treeton dyke

i used to hear stories about things in there, dont think its deep enough or large enough for a full village tho tbh lol

used to go swimming there all the time through the late 70s / 80

amazing im still here really, with the pollution and leeches

Found some interesting photos of the church here, evidently taken from the aforementioned book 'Silent Valley'. Click on the thumbs..

Church Photos

Well, this pic explains why the viaduct (here)

http://www.motorsportfotos.co.uk/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=704&d=1094410814

looks so different and almost unrecogniseable Here!

http://www.motorsportfotos.co.uk/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=705&d=1094410896

God! what a difference, and to to think, all that height of the viaduct's "legs" is under the water right up, almost to the semicircle bit of the viaduct's arches.

Man alive! that's astounding!

I knew the waters were deep, but gosh! I never realised just HOW deep!

PT

I believe some of the stone carvings and stone roof decoration were taken from Derwent Hall and are currently used on Hathersage church and adjoining buildings.

Maybe some historian out there could confirm this

Happy Days!

The pix that some of you have directed us to are absolutely fascinating. Now I'm wondering if the ruin that I ventured into in mid-1959 (I think) was only a small portion - such as the foyer - of the church. I seem to recall that it was white or off-white inside but the portion that remained intact was oh, so small from memory. It actually seemed too small to have been a church.

Does anyone else remember the drought of that period (circa 1959/60) when those remains of the village became not only visible but also accessible?

Time to jump into the Time Machine and travel back over the decades. This brings me to the late-1950's. There was a bad drought that caused the reservoirs and dams to drop their water level considerably. Unbelievably, the Derwent Dam became a mere puddle and fully exposed the village church that normally lay beneath its surface. I actually set foot in that ruined church while the dam was at an all-time low. It was such an eerie experience.

 

Can anyone shed any light at all on the village and the church prior to the dam being built?

Hi Rod , didyou get my comment re; Ashopton,also the school your Mum went to was Salmon Pastures, Arthur. [send me an email sometime]

Hi everyone

This is a very interesting thread!

I first visited Derwent in Nov 1979 - on a Monday morning after it had been chucking it down with rain over the preceeding weekend. The water was pouring over the sill of the dam.

(Is there any way in which I can post pictures to this forum as I took a B&W picture of the scene?)

As many others have stated, the village of Derwent emerges during long periods of drought. However, as the book "The Silent Valley" says, the remains of the village of Ashopton are now completely covered by silt - (and even if it wasn't, the remains of the village are are a hell of a way down under the water. If memory serves me right, they lie about 135 ft down at the base of the Viaduct on its southern side!)

In 1988 I revisted the dams with my wife. In fact it was on Dambuster Day itself - 16th May. While we was there I met some of the pilots and aircrew of 617 Squadron who took part in the raid - quite an honour. The squadron practiced on Howden and Derwent dams prior to the raids on the Mohne and Eder dams in the Ruhr valley of Germany back in 1943, as these dams were the nearest thing this country had that resembled the actual target. (The target dams are even to this day enormous as can be seen at: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/julie.bell102/dams.html)

Unfortunately the RAF did not send over a Tornado jet of the modern-day 617 Squadron as they sometimes do on Dambuster Day. Neither did the last air-worthy Lancaster Bomber "City of Lincoln" of the Battle of Britain Flight make an appearance. Theres a picture of it flying over the dam on an earlier occassion at: http://dambusters.be/web/content.php?content.48 (its in Dutch)

I felt a little sorry for those men who were there to remember fallen comrades.

Regards

Patrick