Blurs

For most of the year, there is little evidence that a village once stood beneath the waters of Ladybower Reservoir. The reservoir occupies a broad valley in the Peak District of Derbyshire. Its waters provide drinking water for communities across the East Midlands, while the surrounding landscape has become one of the most recognisable parts of the Peak District. But beneath the surface lies a different landscape. There were once houses here. There was a church. There was a school. There were farms, roads, trees and a community that had existed for generations. The villages of Derwent and Ashopton were deliberately abandoned in the 1940s before the valleys were flooded to create the Ladybower Reservoir. Today, most of that landscape is hidden. Occasionally, however, falling water levels reveal fragments of what was lost. And when they do, thousands of people are reminded that the reservoir isn't simply a landscape feature. It is also a submerged piece of Derbyshire history. Two Vil...

In the 12th century, something extraordinary was supposedly discovered in the English village of Woolpit, Suffolk. According to medieval accounts, two children appeared near the village. They looked human — but their skin was described as green. They spoke an unknown language, refused ordinary food and initially seemed unable to communicate with the people who found them. One child eventually died. The other survived and learned to speak English. She then reportedly gave an astonishing explanation of where they had come from. The story became known as the Green Children of Woolpit. But was it a supernatural encounter, a distorted historical event, or something much more ordinary? The story The earliest surviving accounts come from two medieval writers. William of Newburgh, writing in the late 12th century, described the children in his Historia rerum Anglicarum. Another account was written by Ralph of Coggeshall, a monk and chronicler. Their versions differ in some details, but the cen...

If storm overflows are designed to deal with rainwater overwhelming the sewage system, why are they sometimes discharging when there has been little or no rain? In 2025, England recorded 291,492 monitored storm-overflow spill events. At first glance, that number is shocking. It works out at almost 800 recorded spill events every day of the year. Yet 2025 was an unusually dry year. In fact, the Environment Agency says the fall in sewage-spill numbers compared with 2024 was heavily influenced by those unusually dry conditions. Spill events fell by 35%, while the total duration of spills fell by 48%. So here's the obvious question: If dry weather reduces sewage spills, why are sewage overflows operating at all when it isn't raining? The answer is complicated — and potentially far more concerning than the headline numbers suggest. What is a storm overflow actually for? To understand the problem, we need to look underground. Many parts of England still have combined sewer systems. ...

In 1847, railway workers in northern England began hearing the sound of a pickaxe coming from underground — apparently from the very place where a navvy had recently been killed. Then one man was lowered into the tunnel to find out what was making the noise. There are railway ghost stories that seem to have been invented decades after the event. And then there are stories that appeared in print while the railway age was still young. One particularly strange example appeared in an 1847 newspaper under the wonderfully understated heading “A Railway Ghost.” It concerned a railway construction site near Stockham, where a worker had recently been killed when part of a tunnel collapsed. Not long afterwards, the men working nearby began hearing something that should not have been there. It sounded like someone working underground. A pickaxe striking rock. Again. And again. And again. The disturbing part was where the sound appeared to be coming from. It seemed to originate from the precise lo...

Deep inside a limestone gorge on the border between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, the walls of several caves carry a strange record of fear. They are covered with hundreds of symbols. Some are simple crossed lines. Others resemble letters, initials, circles, boxes and intricate mazes. Many were scratched directly into the limestone around dark openings, cracks and hollows. For years, some of these markings were dismissed as little more than old graffiti. Then archaeologists and heritage specialists realised they were looking at something very different. These were apotropaic marks — symbols intended to turn away evil, misfortune or supernatural forces. The discovery at Creswell Crags revealed what is believed to be the largest concentration of protective marks ever found in British caves. And their location makes the discovery particularly intriguing. The same caves that contain some of Britain's oldest known prehistoric artwork were later revisited by people who apparently feare...