For the benefit of our readers around the world (who I am sure are legion ... )
Rudyard Lake is a reservoir near Leek, in Staffordshire. It was built at the very end of the 18th century (1797–8) to feed the Caldon Canal, which is a branch of the Trent & Mersey Canal – running from Etruria in Stoke–on–Trent to Froghall, some nine or ten miles to the east. Etruria was the name that the famous potter Josiah Wedgwood had given to his final factory, built in the 1760s, and it came to be used for the surrounding area; Froghall was an important centre for the coal, ironstone, copper and limestone industries.
The lake is about 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometres) in length, and its northern end is about 8 miles from the Cheshire town of Macclesfield. It was named after Ralph Rudyard, a local man who was reputed to have killed King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field (in 1485).
By the mid–19th century the lake had become a popular tourist attraction, lying as it did some seven miles from the Potteries. John Lockwood Kipling was an art teacher, illustrator, and museum curator; Alice Macdonald was the daughter of a Methodist minister. They met at Rudyard Lake, did much of their courting there, and married in 1865. They were so fond of the lake that when their first son was born, on 30 December 1865, they decided to name him after it.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
© Haydn Thompson 2020