The water has dropped far enough that the drowned village of Mardale Green is out of the reservoir — walls, road and house footings standing on the open bed. Haweswater is the Lake District's highest, most easterly lake, a natural lake raised 29 metres in the 1930s to supply Manchester. People come for the quiet of the far eastern fells, and, in a dry year, for the village.
What it is
Haweswater is the highest and most easterly of the lakes, in the valley of Mardale on the far side of the High Street fells from everything else. You will read on several walking sites that it is man-made. It is not. There was a natural lake here, and in the 1930s Manchester Corporation raised it by 29 metres — 95 feet — behind a dam at the northern end. The distinction matters, because it is the whole story of this place: the old lake stayed where it was, and the water rose over the fields and the village at its head.
It supplies about a quarter of the North West's drinking water — roughly 400 million litres a day, carried by gravity down a 60-mile aqueduct to Manchester with no pumping. That is why the water goes up and down: this is a working reservoir, drawn on every day, and in a dry year it drops far enough to uncover what was drowned. When it does, the walls, the old road and the house footings of Mardale Green stand out on the bed, and people drive a long way to walk among them.
The rest of the time it is one of the quietest corners of the National Park: one road in, a dead end at Mardale Head, and the passes climbing away from the car park. This page gives you the honest answer on whether the village is showing and how to check before you drive out, where to park and what the signs actually say, the history in the right order, and what we did on the exposed bed ourselves.
It is Haweswater on the map and on United Utilities' boards. You will also see Hawes Water and Haweswater Reservoir — the same place. Mardale is the valley it sits in, and Mardale Green was the village.
The question everyone asks
It depends on the level, and this page cannot tell you today's — nobody's page can, honestly, because the reservoir is drawn on every day and refills every time it rains on the fells. What we can tell you is how to check before you drive out, and what you will see at each stage if the water is down. When we walked it, the village was out.
One thing to know when you look it up: United Utilities publishes its reservoir levels weekly, and the figure it gives for Haweswater is Haweswater and Thirlmere combined. It is not a Haweswater number. The Environment Agency's own gauge on the reservoir is the closer guide — the two links are in the card below.
Two sources, and read them together. United Utilities' reservoir levels page gives a weekly percentage, but the Haweswater line is Haweswater and Thirlmere together, so a healthy-looking figure can hide a low Haweswater. The Environment Agency gauge on the reservoir itself shows the actual water height and how it has moved over the past few days.
If the gauge trace is falling and has been for weeks, the bed will be showing. If it has jumped after rain, give it time — the level comes back up faster than you would think.
The village sat at the head of the valley, on the higher ground, so it is the first thing out and the last thing back under. The field walls come first, running down off the fellside into the water, then the old road between its walls, then the footings of the houses and farms with their gateposts still standing.
The bridge sits lowest of all. On our visit the road and the house walls were out and grassed over, and only the tops of the bridge parapets were breaking the surface. Beyond the village the bed drops away to the stream, and that is as far as the water lets you go.
On the wall of the Haweswater Hotel there is a framed, typewritten sheet headed “The effects of the drought years on the level of the lake.” It is undated and unsigned, and it stops at 1995. We are reproducing it here as the hotel's record, not as established fact — we have not corrected its figures against anything, and we do not know who typed it. It is worth having because nothing else we have found sets the low years out like this.
The sheet starts by giving the original level of the lake as 690.5 feet O.D. and the top level of the reservoir as 790 feet. That difference, near enough a hundred feet, is an independent match for the published 29-metre raise — a small check that the sheet was typed by somebody who knew the numbers.
| Year | Maximum below top level | Level of lake | Date | “Remaining submerged height” |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1973 | 56.4 ft | 733.6 ft | 10 December | 39.1 ft |
| 1984 | 69.75 ft | 720.25 ft | 2 September | 25.75 ft |
| 1989 | 58.4 ft | 731.6 ft | 15 October | 37.1 ft |
| 1995 | 74.6 ft | 715.4 ft | 1 October | 20.9 ft |
As displayed at the Haweswater Hotel. Column headings are the sheet's own. The hotel's record, reproduced with permission; not verified against other sources.
Two things stand out. First, this list does not match the drought years repeated everywhere else — 1976, 1983, 2018, 2021 and 2022 are the ones you will see quoted, and only 1995 appears on both lists. We are not in a position to say which is right. Second, the last column, remaining submerged height, runs a consistent four feet under the simple arithmetic in every row: subtract 690.5 from the lake level and you get a figure exactly four feet higher each time. So whoever typed it was measuring to a datum four feet above the old lake surface. We do not know what that datum was, and we are not going to guess. That internal consistency, across four rows typed years apart, is what makes us take the sheet seriously.
History
Before the water there were two villages in the valley: Mardale Green at the head of the old lake, with its church, its inn and its farms, and the smaller Measand further down. Both went under. What follows is the story in the order it happened, because the dates get muddled everywhere else.
Manchester got its powers under the Manchester Corporation Act of 1919, and work on the dam began in 1929. You will see two dates for what happened next, and both are right: the valley began to flood in 1935, and the dam was not completed until 1940. Flooding a valley is a process, not an event. The water was allowed to rise behind the dam while it was still being built, so Mardale Green went under five years before the structure holding the water back was finished. Sites that give you one date or the other have each lost half the story.
The dam itself is 36 metres high and was the first of its kind in Britain — United Utilities' board at the viewpoint makes the point that it was built through a decade that took in the Great Depression and the start of the Second World War. Alfred Wainwright was among those who objected to the whole scheme.
Holy Trinity held its last service on 18 August 1935. The church seated 75 and the service was all-ticket; far more people wanted to be there than could be. It was the one building in the village that was not simply destroyed — it was taken down stone by stone in April 1937, and 97 sets of remains were moved from the churchyard to Shap.
Most of the rest of Mardale Green was blown up by the Royal Engineers, who used the empty farms and houses for demolition practice. That is why what you find on the bed today is footings and wall lines rather than ruins: the buildings were levelled before the water arrived.
The village inn was the Dun Bull, and it was demolished with the rest. Manchester built the Haweswater Hotel on the new shore road in 1937 to replace it — the date is on the beam in the bar. The farms went the same way as the inn: Goosemire, Low Whelter and the others are names on old photographs now, and a few of those photographs hang on the hotel wall. There is more on the hotel further down.
While one village was being taken apart, another was being put up. Burnbanks, just below the dam, was built to house the 200 men who built it and their families — 66 self-contained bungalows, which for the early 1930s was remarkably modern housing. They are renovated cottages now. You pass through Burnbanks on the way in: there is roadside parking, the Bampton and District Local History Society keeps an information board in the village, and the road through the hamlet itself is a dead end.
The church's stone and its windows were not wasted. They were reused to build the draw-off tower — the castellated stone tower standing at the water's edge on the road side of the reservoir, between the car park and the dam. So the one building from Mardale Green that is still standing is the one that holds back the water that drowned it.
Accounts differ on where the tower stands — some put it on the western shore. It does not. From the road it is right in front of you, on the near shore, looking straight across the water at Wood Howe — which fits the other account, the one that puts it in line with the natural head of the old lake.
On the ground
The same car park gives you two completely different places, and which one you get is decided by the water. This is the thing to understand before you plan anything at Haweswater.
The head of the valley is water, right up to the car park wall, and the only way towards it is the shoreline path around The Rigg — the wooded promontory in front of you. The village is a story you are told, not something you see. It is still a fine place to be: the fells stand straight up out of the water and the passes climb away from the road end. But you are looking at a reservoir.
Everything changes. The water pulls back from the head of the valley and leaves a wide, flat bed you can walk straight out across: the old road between its walls, the field walls running in every direction, the footings of the farms and houses, and, if it drops far enough, the bridge. You are walking down a village street that has been under a reservoir for most of a century.
We did not do the circular. We did the thing you can only do when the water is down: from Mardale Head car park, through the five-bar gate — not the walkers' gate beside it, which is for the passes — and straight out across the exposed village floor to the stream, and back the same way. 2.15 miles, an hour and a quarter including a lot of standing about looking at walls. Easy going, and boggy underfoot — the bed is silt with grass coming through, and it holds water in every hollow. Cass, our Staffordshire Bull Terrier, was on the lead the whole way, as the signs ask.
You pick up the old road almost at once and follow it between its walls, past the house footings with their gateposts still standing, out to the stream. That is as far as it goes. Beyond the stream the water deepens and there is nowhere to go, so you turn round with the whole valley in front of you. None of this exists when the level is high — it is a walk that only appears in a dry year.
Two lumps of woodland stand out of the head of the reservoir and they get confused. The Rigg is the long, conifer-covered promontory on your left as you walk out — it is joined to the fell, and the shoreline path runs round it. It is not an island. Wood Howe is the island: the rounded, wooded knoll further out, sitting in the water in the middle of the valley. It is a natural knoll that became an island when the valley flooded. Nobody built it, whatever you may read.
Proper footwear, whatever the weather is doing. The bed is boggy and uneven, the walls are loose stone, and the level comes back up after rain, so a bed that is walkable this week may not be next week. That is all we are going to say; we are not going to tell you it is fine, because we do not know what the water will be doing when you go.
Getting there & parking
There is one road in and it is a dead end, so you come back the way you went. From Penrith, head out through Askham, then Helton and Butterwick to Bampton. In Bampton turn right past the Mardale Inn — that is the name on the sign; on Google Maps it is listed as The Mardale Inn at St Patrick's Well — and follow the lane to Burnbanks. The road through the hamlet itself is a dead end, so keep left for the reservoir road.
Your first sight of the dam is from the roadside just after Burnbanks, and there is a viewing area with United Utilities' interpretation board and the 1955 plaque. From there the road runs the length of the eastern shore, past the Haweswater Hotel, and ends about three miles beyond the hotel at Mardale Head. That is the car park, and the passes and the bed all start from it. The same stretch of road is one of our Lake District cycling routes, so expect bikes as well as walkers on it.
A rough surface with a painted turning area at the end of the road, room for roughly 20 to 30 cars around its edge and along the verge. On the day we visited it was free — no machine, no signs about charges. We are reporting what we saw, not a permanent arrangement: United Utilities own it, and their Haweswater page is where any change would show first. When it is full, the laybys on the last mile are the fallback.
/// what3words — Mardale Head car park ///expand.spenders.dated A 3-metre square. There is no useful postcode at the road end.Your first view of the dam, from the roadside just after Burnbanks. United Utilities' interpretation board is here — the one with the rules on it — and so is the 1955 Manchester Corporation Waterworks plaque set into the wall, recording Swindale Beck and Naddle Beck being diverted into the reservoir. Worth ten minutes on the way in.
/// what3words — dam viewing area ///lyricism.proved.bottom A 3-metre square. More precise than the postcode.Three laybys in the last mile before Mardale Head, each with a view down over the reservoir from above — the best places to see how far the water has dropped before you commit to the walk. A gate about a mile up the road from the car park has parking too, and there is roadside parking at Burnbanks by the dam.
Rules on the ground
People ask whether you are allowed on the bed, whether you can camp, whether the dog has to be on a lead. Rather than guess, here is what the signs say. The signage at Mardale Head is all together at the car park, on the post by the two gates — a five-bar gate onto the old village floor, and a walkers' gate a few yards from it for the rest of the walks — with United Utilities' big board back at the dam viewpoint. This is what was posted on the day we went — not a claim that nothing else applies, and not a rule we have invented.
A joint RSPB and United Utilities board headed “Help us protect Juniper here!”. A disease called Phytophthora austrocedri is killing juniper in the valley — one of the rarest upland trees, and the board notes it is not harmful to people or animals. It asks you to:
The big “Haweswater — the water quarter” board at the viewpoint. Under While you're here it carries five symbols:
It also says fishing is allowed with an Environment Agency rod licence, no ground baiting, and that there is a lakeshore path on the road side of the reservoir with the car park at the end giving access to the fells.
On our visit, the signs on the post by the gates at the car park also included a no-barbecues notice. We read it on the day rather than photographing it, so it is reported here as seen, not as a standing rule. Between the boards that is the list — camping, fires, barbecues, motor boats and swimming out; dogs on leads, paths kept to, boots cleaned.
Manchester's initials are still on the valley. At the car park, on the post by the two gates, there is a cast-iron M.C.W.W. fingerpost — Manchester Corporation Water Works — pointing walkers to Gatescarth Pass for Longsleddale, Nan Bield Pass for Kentmere, and the fellside track to Bampton by the north-west shore. Those routes go through the walkers' gate; the five-bar gate beside it is the one onto the village floor. At the dam viewpoint the 1955 plaque records, in capitals, that water from Swindale Beck and Naddle Beck was diverted into the Haweswater Reservoir in October that year, in the names of the aldermen who chaired the Waterworks Committee. Both are original, and both are still doing their job.
Wildlife
No. There have been no golden eagles at Haweswater since 2015, and there are none anywhere in England. A lot of pages leave that vague, because the eagle is the thing Haweswater was famous for. It was, and it is worth knowing the story — but if you are coming to see one, you will not.
Golden eagles came back to the Lake District from Scotland on their own and first bred at Haweswater in 1969, in Riggindale — the side valley opening off the head of the reservoir, under High Street. It was the only place in England where they nested. The RSPB staffed a viewpoint in Riggindale for years so that people could watch them. The last male arrived in 2001–02. His mate died in 2004 and he was alone in the valley from then until he was last seen in November 2015. He is presumed dead. England has had no resident golden eagle since.
The valley is now run as Wild Haweswater, a landscape-restoration partnership between the RSPB, who manage the site, and United Utilities, who own the land. Juniper is among the species grown at the nursery at Naddle Farm for restoration planting across the valley — which is why the disease on the car park board matters as much as it does. Their site has the detail on what is being restored and where.
Eat, drink, stay
On the shore road between Burnbanks and Mardale Head. Manchester built it in 1937 to replace the drowned Dun Bull — the date is on the beam — and it has a proper bar, with the old photographs of Mardale Green and the drought sheet on the walls. It gets busy in midsummer, so do not count on a table without asking; we are not giving opening hours because they change, and the hotel's own site has them.
The village pub in Bampton, on the corner where you turn for the reservoir — you pass it on the way in and again on the way out. The sign says Mardale Inn. One line is all it needs: it is there, it is the last pub before the reservoir road, and its own site has the rest.
It is also, by its own account, a community pub — bought and owned by more than five hundred local shareholders, which made news around here when it happened. The pub describes itself as small, serving food and drink sourced locally where it can, with six recently refurbished bedrooms for anyone who wants to stay in the valley rather than drive out of it.
Elsewhere
Mardale Green is not the only one, and if the drowned village is what brought you here there are three others worth knowing about. In the Lake District itself, Thirlmere — Manchester's earlier reservoir — took the hamlets of Armboth and Wythburn; there is more on that on our guide to the sixteen lakes. In the Peak District, Ladybower covers the villages of Derwent and Ashopton. In mid-Wales, Lake Vyrnwy covers the old village of Llanwddyn. Each has its own story; this page is Haweswater's.
The longer walks
The full circuit of the reservoir is 17.1 km with 556 m of ascent, five to six hours, and graded hard — it is not the lakeside stroll the name suggests. The passes to Longsleddale and Kentmere and the way up to High Street all start from the same car park. We will write those up properly on their own page; until then, the Penrith walks page and the fells guide are the places to start.
FAQ
Keep exploring
The town you set out from — castle, market, and the rest of the eastern Lakes on its doorstep.
Short and long walks from the town and the villages around it, Askham included.
Every lake in the National Park in one list — which are natural, which are reservoirs, and what is under Thirlmere.
The dead-end shore road from Mardale Head is one of our Lake District cycling routes — smooth tarmac, there and back, with barely a car in sight.