GALLERY: A dip into the flooding archives

By Toby Neal | Features | Published: Feb 24, 2020

The bad years are in the history books, and the more recent ones don't need to be, as they are still seared in the memory.

A bus splashes through Thompson Avenue, Wolverhampton, after a flash flood.

Flooded streets of Walsall. Based on the vintage of the cars it looks perhaps the 1920s.

Come on in, the water's lovely (not recommended, by the way). Youngsters play in the floods in Guy Avenue, Wolverhampton, after a thunderstorm on August 14, 1984.

Well, that's one way to try to catch a train. Porter Terry Nightingale tries his luck with a hook and line at Walsall's flooded railway station in May 1969.

This lion was getting a roar deal in Stourport in February 2014.

It's not always the rain to blame. These cars were left stranded on the Birmingham New Road in Coseley in March, 1972, after a 12 inch water main burst.

The old Willenhall Bilston Street railway station suffering from flooding in early November 1957.

Shrewsbury residents queue on a traffic island as they wait to be ferried through floodwaters by emergency service vehicles on October 31, 2000.

Hairdresser Karen Bradbury uses the council's emergency boat to check on her hair salon in Longden Coleham in the 2000 floods.

The summer of 2007 brought severe flash flooding. These vehicles went under in Coalbrookdale in June.

Coracle man Harry Rogers gets about in the flooded Wharfage, Ironbridge, in 1947.

This farm near Welshpool was isolated by an inland sea in 1998.

A duck to the rescue. A Mrs Williams is rescued by the Army at Pool Quay in December 1964, being helped to a DUKW, a military amphibious vehicle commonly known as a Duck. She said she would leave the house for the sake of her children.

The view from Castle Walk, Bridgnorth, on January 16, 1968.

The door of the Boat Inn, Jackfield, records flood levels down the years. Back on November 1, 2000, the water came near the top. Another notch on the door will no doubt be added marking this month's level.

If you really want to go back, there was February 14, 1795, when it flooded to 20ft 3.5ins above the ordinary low water level in Shrewsbury.

And every so often in the many years since, nature heaps its misery upon us again, just to remind us that whatever we do, in the end there is no escape from the power of the weather.

Nevertheless, new technology has brought a measure of relief – for some. In modern times flood defences have protected the homes of many folk living by the River Severn.

But look what happened on the River Teme this time round.

And in any event they are no help in the face of the flash flooding which turns harmless brooks into raging torrents, and brings waves of water cascading from the hills, as was seen, for instance, in the rain-soaked summer of 2007.

Let's toy with a few dates which are still within living memory. There was disastrous flooding for consecutive years in 1946 and 1947, the latter being especially terrible because the floods came after the harshest winter for many years.

Fast forward to the 1960s and there were several flood years, but with the 1970s and 1980s being relatively flood-free, a mistaken belief took hold among some folk that the massive reservoirs which had been created in Mid Wales had somehow meant flooding of the River Severn was a thing of the past.

Flood defences for Shrewsbury were proposed in the 1990s, but council and public opinion was against them.

That was a view which was to change when the great millennium floods, the worst for over 50 years, struck in the last three months of 2000.

So let's take a dip (no pun intended) into our archives to recall some of the events of yesteryear, which are now history, but a history, as we have seen this month, which is apt to repeat itself.

By Toby Neal
Feature Writer

A journalist in Shropshire for 40 years, mainly writes features and columns, especially about aspects of Shropshire history. Lives in Telford and is based at the Ketley headquarters.