Take a hike around the Scar House Reservoir in the Yorkshire Dales and you may notice some a small huts and concrete foundations carved into the ground.
Though the ruins look primitive now, just a century ago the lost village of Scar was humming with more than 2,000 workers eagerly going about their work building the Nidd Valley dam.
The temporary village was thrown up in 1921 when Bradford’s chief engineer Lewis Mitchell began the project to secure the city’s water supply.
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Over the next 15 years the village grew into a complete settlement with hostels, bungalows, houses, and all mod cons.
Scar even had its own football club, cinema and fish and chip shop.
Meanwhile a railway was built to carry one million tonnes of stone from Dales quarries to the construction site.
For a workman in Yorkshire at the time there was no better place to live – residents had hot water, lights and flushing toilets, unlike many of the surrounding villages in the area.
But all good things must come to an end. With the project complete in 1936, the village was sold within two days and taken apart.
The only structure standing to this day is the old projection room – though the village hall it was once attached to was moved to the nearby hamlet of Darley where it can still be seen.
Yet Scar is not the only abandoned village in the Nidd Valley.
On the edge of the valley stand the crumbling ruins of five stone houses, also long-abandoned.
This was the lost village of Lodge. Much older than Scar, it was formed as a farming community in the 16th century and remained a small village by the 1920s.
The abandoned village of Lodge stands on the edge of the Nidd Valley
(Image: Chris Heaton)
Though it would not have been flooded by the new reservoir, engineers worried that the villagers might contaminate the water supply and decided to buy them out. The last villager in Lodge left in 1929.
The amazing ruins of both lost villages are visible on walks around Scar House Reservoir. With a car park nearby, it makes an ideal day trip combining fascinating history with some beautiful views.
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