History
The village of Rudyard was named after Ralph Rudyard, a man who is reputed to have killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Rudyard Lake was constructed by the engineer John Rennie, for the Trent and Mersey Canal company in 1797–98 to feed the Caldon Canal.
On June 26, 1846 the North Staffordshire Railway successfully took over the canal company and lake as part of one of its acts of parliament that resulted in the formation of the North Staffordshire Railway. Having acquired the lake and the land around it the railway used the land down one side as the route for it's Churnet Valley Line between Macclesfield and Uttoxeter. Two stations were built, one at Rudyard village (later renamed Rudyard Lake) and one at the north end of the lake called called Rudyard Lake (later renamed Cliffe Park)
Because of the accessibility brought by the railway stations, daytrippers and tourists began visiting the lake. Visitors included John Lockwood Kipling and Alice Macdonald, the parents of Rudyard Kipling, who met there on a trip from Burslem. They liked the place so much they named their son after it. By the end of the 1800s up to 20,000 people visited the lake each day. Matthew Webb entertained crowds by demonstrating his swimming in the lake, and Charles Blondin performed a tightrope walk across the lake.
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“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
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