What would you do if you were told your village had to disappear so a city could have water?

(Content note: this episode includes a fatal explosion and the exhumation of graves.)

In the first half of the twentieth century, three northern valleys were flooded to make reservoirs. This episode tells the story of each of them. Mardale Green in the Lake District was drowned beneath Haweswater to supply Manchester. Fernilee in the Goyt Valley, near Buxton, was home to a gunpowder works that lost three men in the 1909 explosion before the water came. At Derwent in Derbyshire, the graves were dug up and moved before Ladybower filled, and the church spire was left standing above the water until it was dynamited in 1947.

This is a gripping story about loss, progress, and who pays the price for both. In a dry summer, all three places still come back.

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Thanks lads! Lucy x

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About the show

Bad, Mad & Northern is a history and true crime podcast about the villains, eccentrics and extraordinary stories of the North: murderers and body snatchers, kings and rebels, drowned villages and Cold War secrets. Each episode is carefully researched and told with honesty about the sources, and a healthy dose of northern sarcasm.

Meet your host

I'm Lucy Sheridan: author, speaker, and proud northerner, recording from an armchair in the Peak District. I've always been drawn to the darker corners of our history, and this show is where I get to share them with you. Pull up a chair.

Website: www.badandmad.com

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