Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire is an artificial lake created at the start of the 19th century to supply the canal network in the area. Once the railways arrived it became a popular destination for people from the surrounding cities, and has the feel of the Lake District.
Along with boats for sailing and rowing, small pleasure steamers, and other water-side entertainments, the lake acquired hotels and guest houses. However, people also built huts and chalets on the banks of the lake and the surrounding hillsides.
Today the lake side is a mixture of public areas, farmland at the north end away from the busier “dam head” at the south, and modern cabins and chalets in private hands on long narrow plots from the lake to a road or bridleway – some of which can be rented for holidays. However, there is a surviving hut site on the far side of a field at the north end.
This first picture shows two huts in a fenced off area in the field to the north side of Reacliffe Road as it turns southeast from running southwest. The huts’ fence has gates and it looks as if they had gardens. There are prominent “Trespassers will be prosecuted” signs near the road and on the huts themselves.
These two surviving huts look pretty run down and unoccupied, but have been repaired with modern materials at some point.
Back down at the dam head is a visitor’s centre, parking, toilets, cafe, boats for hire, and a narrow-gauge railway.
In the trees to the north west of this area is a caravan site, which is often a sign of former hutting sites. I think it was in the woods to the north of this caravan site that Paul Barrett found derelict railway coach bodies in 2014, that presumably had been used as huts. I couldn’t find these this year, but it was quite overgrown this time of year. Judging by historical photographs, it looks as if the whole area has become a lot more wooded than it was at its height, and presumably before that it was entirely given over to sheep farming.
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