It’s only when you take a second, closer look at Grade II-listed St Matthew’s Church in Normanton that you realise something isn’t quite right. Handsome though it undoubtedly is, it appears to be the victim of a cruel optical illusion as though, somehow, it’s sinking into Rutland Water. Which, in a manner of speaking, it is.

In the 1970s - in the face of a growing, water-hungry population - it was decided to flood the Gwash valley above which the church hung, turning it into a giant reservoir. Homes below were demolished and the area inundated.

Following public outcry, however, the church, the floor of which was below the proposed water level, was saved - or at least its upper section. Its lower portion was filled with rubble and disappeared behind an embankment constructed around St Matthews, before the engineers turned on the tap, creating an island which, as countless wedding photographers have subsequently discovered, makes it as pretty as a picture.

All of which is rather apt. Running from near the church up into the wooded hill in the background on the other side of the water is a lane, although you wouldn’t attempt to negotiate it today. Some 35 metres or so under water, it once connected this latter day walkers’ idyll with beautiful Hambleton Hall, itself now stranded on a peaceful promontory in Rutland Water, by surface area the largest reservoir in England.