Have you ever heard of the lost Kingdom of Mardale that lies dormant beneath the waters of the Lake District?

A Cumbrian Atlantis of sorts, lost to history but boasting a fascinating legend. At one point in history, it even had its own king.

A Canterbury Conspiracy perpetrator named Hugh Holme rebelled against King John in 1208 and failed.

Facing royal retribution, Hugh attempted to flee to the safety of Scotland but never made the border, instead finding refuge in the valley of Riggindale.

Over time, Hugh settled and residents referred to him as the King of Mardale.

But how did it become the Lost Kingdom? For centuries Mardale Green was a picturesque Cumbria village until it was drowned by thirst for water.

In the early 20th Century, 751,000 Manchester citizens needed to drink, cook, wash and work. Like many remote villages back then, Mardale's deep glacial valleys offered a suggestive site for a reservoir.

In 1929 the government granted the Manchester Corporation permission to dam and flood Mardale. The area that a contemporary newspaper, according to geographical.co.uk, described as ‘one of the most secluded and peaceful places in the Lake District’ was transformed forever.

Despite protests, Mardale Green was evacuated and destroyed. The village’s medieval church, Holy Trinity, usually held 75 people. Hundreds gathered for the final service in August 1935. The dead departed alongside the living.

Bodies in the churchyard were exhumed and reburied elsewhere. The church itself was dismantled brick by brick. Some of the windows and masonry were used to build the reservoir’s draw-off tower.

“No-one else protested, we were the only ones”

“No-one else protested, we were the only ones,” Helena Bailey told journalist and writer, Karen Barden, in 1995, as per Lakelandwalkingtales. Helena was the daughter of the Vicar of Burneside.

Her family had holidayed in Mardale year after year from 1914 to 1929; she felt like a local. Helena would have been four on her first visit, and nineteen on her last.

She recounted how she and her brothers and sister stealthily followed the surveyors and pulled out every one of those marker posts. But the teenagers were no match for the Manchester Corporation, and few others could muster the fight.

“There had been a world war,” she explained. “The country was exhausted. People just wanted to get on quietly with their lives.”

For years Mardale Green lay out of sight underwater

“And this proposal also meant jobs, for hundreds of men.”

The rest of Mardale Green was blown up. The Royal Engineers used the abandoned buildings, including the historic Dun Bull Inn, to test plastic explosives. 

After the destruction, the flooding started. For years Mardale Green lay out of sight underwater.

It only becomes visible to the public in the summer months and in severe droughts when the water disperses.

It has resurfaced several times since, in 1983, 1995, 2018, 2021, and more recently in 2022.