Return to introduction or Go to next location The Mermaid of Black Mere Pool
The mermaid legend can certainly be traced back to the mid nineteenth century when a wayside inn, around half a kilometre downhill from the pool, was renamed The Mermaid after the legend. The Mermaid Inn is now both a pub and restaurant with spectacular views of the surrounding countryside. At almost 500 metres above sea level, it claims to be the highest elevation restaurant in England. If you want to hear tales of the mermaid you only have to visit the inn and you’ll find plenty of patrons keen to tell you that they know someone who has seen strange things up at the pool. Although I have been unable to speak to anyone who has actually claimed to have seen anything themselves, reports refer to weird curtains or pillars of light seen floating above the water at night.
It is possible that Black Mere Pool produces luminous marsh gas: rare but eerie phenomena known as Will-o’-the-Wisps. This might be the origin of the mermaid legend: a ghostly light hovering over the pool, thought to be a spectral water nymph by mystified night-time travellers. If luminous marsh gas is responsible for the mermaid legend, then the time to see her would be at night after a period of high wind and heavy rainfall when the usually still waters have been disturbed. Directions:From Leek, follow the A53 towards Buxton, turn right at the Moss Rose Inn and through the village of Thorncliff; the Mermaid Inn is on the right side of the road. OS Landranger Map 119, grid reference 036604. Black Mere Pool is beside the road, to the left, around half a kilometre further on. Links:
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Believe it or not the landlocked county of Staffordshire has its own mermaid folklore. Black Mere Pool, in the North Staffordshire Moors near the town of Leek, is the site of what may be the only inland mermaid legend in England. The small, remote hilltop lake, around fifty metres wide, is a particularly haunting site. Set on the craggy and barren southern edge of the Peak District, beside the Leek to Buxton road, it is said that the dark peat-stained waters of the pool are bottomless; cattle refuse to drink there and birds never fly above it. Over the centuries it has been the scene of a number of mysterious drownings and even a murder when, in 1679, a woman pedlar was dumped in the pool by a local serial killer. Tradition holds that the mermaid rises from the pool at midnight to lure unwary travellers to their deaths in the dark watery depths – but only single men, apparently. There are various legends concerning the origin of the mermaid. In one, a sailor from nearby Thorncliff fell in love with her and brought her back from sea, and in another she was originally a witch who transformed herself into a water nymph after been thrown into the pool during the Middle Ages.