Lake Users
For its first fifty or so years the reservoir must have been a tranquil place with perhaps just a few local landowners and a small number of people walking to the lake from local villages and towns.
Anna Watkins – Double Olympian
Anna was born and raised in Leek, Staffordshire, where she attended Westwood College. She studied Natural Sciences at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she started rowing in 2001. She is a Double Olympian, having won a bronze medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics
Captain Webb
Captain Matthew Webb was the first man to swim the Channel in August 1875. Two years later, on 25 June 1877, he hosted a ‘Grand Aquatic Fete’ at Rudyard which included a demonstration of his channel swim in front of
Local People
The Rudyard Lake archive has many pictures of the people who have lived round the lake over the years, from the more prominent residents like Fanny Bostock and the Reverend Boothman of Cliffe Park Hall to the ordinary folk in more modest
Dave Clarke – Transatlantic rower and sailor.
Dave Clarke from Macclesfield came to the Lake in 2007 saying that it was his ambition to row single handed across the Atlantic and that he had ordered a boat for the purpose. Dave had never rowed before although he had
Day at the Lake
On the 30th April, 1st & 2nd of May 2016, Wild Rumpus, producers of the award-winning Just So Festival created a large-scale outdoor experience at the Lake.
Carlos Trower – The African Blondin
Carlos Trower, an Afro-American tight rope walker who called himself ‘The African Blondin’ was born in the late 1840s in New York and began tight-rope walking at an early age.
George Orwell
George Orwell visited Rudyard in the inter-war years during his research for The Road To Wigan Pier which sought to expose the working and living conditions of the economically deprived North of England.
