Qualla: Rutland Water

Rutland Water: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Two villages were demolished to make this lake. Nether Hambleton and most of Middle Hambleton were levelled in the early 1970s, their wells plugged, their stones carted away, before the engineers closed the dam at Empingham and let the Gwash and the pumped water from the Welland and the Nene begin to rise. By 1979 the valley was gone, the largest man-made lake in Europe lay where farms had been, and St Matthew's Church at Normanton stood half-drowned at the new shoreline. The story of Rutland Water is the story of what England decided to do with a valley.

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Rutland Water: A Reservoir, Built on Purpose

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The need was simple and inarguable: the East Midlands was growing, and Peterborough, in particular, was thirsty. Engineers picked the Gwash valley because the clay subsoil made for a watertight basin, because the topography allowed a relatively short dam, and because the catchmen...

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Rutland Water: What Was Lost, What Was Kept

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Nether Hambleton and most of Middle Hambleton were demolished before the flooding. Upper Hambleton survived because it stood on the ridge between the Gwash valley and its side valley, and that ridge is now the Hambleton Peninsula, a long finger of pasture and woodland projecting ...

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Rutland Water: Mr Rutland and His Kind

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1996 the Rutland Osprey Project began to release young ospreys onto the reservoir, the first successful reintroduction of breeding ospreys to central England in 150 years. One of the early birds, ringed and tracked obsessively, became locally famous as Mr Rutland. By 2021 ther...

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Rutland Water: The Sea Dragon

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In early 2021, the reserve manager Joe Davis was overseeing the routine draining of a lagoon when he saw a vertebra in the mud. What lay below turned out to be a Temnodontosaurus, an ichthyosaur about ten metres long, with a skull block weighing close to a tonne. It is the larges...

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Rutland Water: The Way People Use It Now

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The 23-mile perimeter track is one of the most popular cycling and walking circuits in the Midlands. The Rutland Belle pleasure cruiser carries visitors between the Egleton end and Whitwell. Sailing boats lean across the water on summer afternoons, and the Rutland Sailing Club ru...

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