Floods

Brook Street, 2006.

Interviewer: You mentioned a little while ago about how Wymeswold used to flood and that it was a regular thing. Can you just tell me something…

Mrs Smith: Yes, that was in the Brook Street. There’s a little brook runs down the middle of the street called the River Mantle, and sometimes in very heavy rains it flooded, and sometimes went into the houses, even. Now they’ve put a new culvert and huge pipes at the side of the village which take the flood water, and now Wymeswold has never flooded since. But it flooded so badly that the boys in the village would get a boat, and they’d have this boat on Brook Street!

Interviewer: Was there ever any sort of tragic accidents caused by it?

Mrs Smith: No, no. I’ve seen people being carried across. I once saw a lady named Mrs Elleker, she was a slim little thing, and she worked for a farmer who was a cripple, and she carried that farmer across the flood. I can remember seeing her do that now, yes. They’re both dead now of course.

Interviewer: What time of the year had it used to usually flood?

Mrs Smith: Oh anytime, one August was one of the worst I can ever remember.

Interviewer: Really, when you’d had a big storm?

Mrs Smith: Yes, it rained, we had almost a cloud burst, and then it rained continually, several days, and the flood it didn’t just stay in the village, it went right out towards the Loughborough Road, towards Hoton. And I remember our house, this was when I was a girl, we were marooned in our house and we watched the farmer opposite rescue his hens from his field which was absolutely flooded, and this hut stood in the middle of the field but he took his horse and float through the flooded field and rescued these hens. And now, since all this drainage has been properly done there are houses built all over that field and they’ve never been known to be flooded.

©EMOHA