A centuries-old village was buried under a reservoir… Well, it was one day, when, all of a sudden, houses, neighbourhood and roads of the village became visible, as the reservoir dried up because of severe heat waves in Britain.

This incident has taken place in West Yorkshire. Due to intense heat, the water of the Baitings Reservoir in the West Yorkshire Pennines, linking Yorkshire and Lancashire, recently dried up; and the soil underneath became visible… as a result, the age-old village, which had been under water for a few hundred years, has reappeared. Although The name of this village is not known, its existence has been traced in a 16th Century map.

A lady recently visited the place as the water of the reservoir dried up. She has posted some images of the village on her Facebook page. Those images show stone-walled houses, as well as roads made of stone. There are also stone arches, and even the remains of a tavern. The not-so-big village also had a centuries-old packhorse bridge. As evident in those images, the village was once densely populated. There were 1,250 villagers at that village in 1920, when the area was vacated for constructing the dam. Since then, the village has been under water. The reservoir was built in 1956 mainly to supply water to Wakefield.

Yorkshire Water, which maintains the reservoir, has confirmed that the water level has fallen below 50% this year, prompting the concerned authorities to issue its first hosepipe ban in 27 years. Neil Dewi, the Director of Yorkshire Water, has stressed: “The hot, dry, weather means that Yorkshire’s rivers are running low and our reservoirs are around 20% lower than we would expect for this time of year.“

Meanwhile, Britain has been experiencing intense heat waves for the past one month, with different parts of the country facing acute water crises. However, the current climate condition has revealed centuries-old history, making the archaeologists happy.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das