Scattered across Britain are lost towns and villages that few know about.
Many have disappeared for unknown reasons, others because of events such as the plague, and yet more because of things like industrialisation.
A number of them stand as they were many years ago, abandoned almost overnight, mostly settlements that were flooded by the authorities.
Many years ago, the Derwent Valley was victim to one of these floods. For most of the year, its former towns and villages lay still and quiet beneath the water, but often, when the conditions are just right, they rear their heads and tell a secret history about the land.
Before World War 2, the villages of Derwent and nearby Ashopton seemed as though they would exist forever.
Their communities were filled with centuries-old buildings, including a packhorse bridge which was built in the 1600s and moved because of the flooding.
Ladybower Reservoir blankets the villages today, a vast body of water with a blue sheen, used to for river control and to compensate for the water retained by all three local dams, along with supply into the drinking water system and hydroelectricity generation.
When the reservoir was built in 1944, cities such as Derby, Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield were expanding at unprecedented rates. To lose a few villages was considered a small pay-off by the authorities.
The plan had originally been to build two reservoirs, Howden and Derwent, further up the valley, and so sparing the village.
It quickly became apparent that two would not be sufficient, and so a third was rehired.
This dam was the nail in the coffin for Derwent, and by 1945, it was completely underwater.
For decades, Derwent remained invisible, but then came 1976, when the reservoir’s water levels fell to a level that exposed the village in its entirety.
This happens in particularly hot and dry seasons and occurred again in 1989, 1995, 2003, 2018, and more recently 2022.
In 2018, water levels fell so low that the appearance of the village attracted an unprecedented number of visitors.
By November 3, mountain rescue had to retrieve a man who had become stuck in viscous mud around the ruins of the village.
Later on, park wardens reported that some parts of the village had been vandalised, with visitors even removing some parts of the old town and taking them away.
While nearly all of the village was flooded, some houses are today visible above the waterline, around five buildings, the village hall, and several farms.
Similarly, the civil parish of Derwent still exists, and in the 2011 census reportedly had 51 inhabitants.
