1968 Flood

No recounting of this area's weather would be complete without a major reference to the floods which followed a prolonged thunderstorm and torrential rain on July the 10th of this year. So much of an impact did the floods have on the people of North Somerset and Avon that already two books have been published on the subject.

Although floods were reported throughout the south west from mid-day the full force of the torrential rain did not reach our area until the early evening. The destructive floods took a couple more hours to reach their height of death and destruction. By the early hours of the following morning all the rivers and streams were overflowing torrents sweeping all before them in an orgy of destruction.

In total seven people lost their lives and hundreds more suffered enormous hardships as roads became fast moving rivers, bridges folded, and properties engulfed.

Coming from the south the storm hit Somerset first after wreaking havoc in Devon. The main road between Yeovil and Ilchester was blocked by floods. At West Coker, Manor Street was flooded to a depth of four feet and at Bishopwood, near Chard, a 12 year old girl saved a 67 year old lady by climbing up the outside of a flooded house, and with her mother, making a rope of knotted sheets to haul the old lady to safety. In Taunton hundreds of homes suffered severe flooding and in some surrounding districts rescue involved getting people out of bedroom windows by boat.

At the East Reach and Musgrove hospitals the staff fought hard to stop the waters rising and keep the electricity running as well as trying to treat the injured in makeshift conditions. In Bridgwater the town centre soon became flooded and later several areas were under several feet of water.

Weston-super-Mare was cut off by flooding and landslides and parts of Burnham and Clevedon were under more than two feet of water. At Congresbury, where the River Yeo burst its banks and the main street filled up with six feet of swirling muddy water, two policemen rescued three men by swimming to them with the aid of ropes. At Draycott an 82 year old lady was found trapped in her house surrounded by her floating furniture.

It may be that the storm received renewed vigour as it passed over the Mendips as around and to the north of the hills the floods seem to have been even more severe. The village of Westbury-sub-Mendip, on the southern slopes, could not be reached even by the fire service as the water poured off the Mendips and into the houses of the village.

A similar occurrence occurred at Easton and Wookey Hole. At Wells the firemen could not even get the second tender out of the station due to the floods in the city. As well as the roads in the vicinity being flooded to several feet, landslides were another hazard hindering the rescue of those stranded. At Cheddar the Gorge became a raging torrent of water, mud and rocks. The torrent swept down via Velvet Bottom from the former lead mines at Charterhouse to join the road to Cheddar which soon became filled with piles of rocks and debris.

There was even a huge 30 foot hole scoured out of the road, in fact, there was no road at all for half a mile after an estimated hundreds of thousands of tons of rubble destroyed the tarmac. Twelve of the Cheddar Cave workers had a very lucky escape as the water rose and trapped them in the cave all night.

They had been able to get higher than the flood water and survive what must have been a terrifying ordeal. Many of the Gorge shops were severely flooded. A Cheddar farmer lost 40,000 chickens in the flood and there was an enormous loss of wildlife. 35 people were rehoused in Cheddar and the main tourist area was closed for at least two weeks. A total of 67 bridges in Somerset were either destroyed or badly damaged.

Frome town centre was impassable for most of the night when the market place flooded to a depth of several feet. Many of the surrounding villages had serious flooding. Radstock and Midsomer Norton both had town centre floods, up to four feet in Midsomer Norton.

Factories in Gloucester, Cheltenham and Staverton were flooded up to three feet deep. In Gloucester some homes were flooded three times in 24 hours. In Wiltshire, Chippenham, Melksham, Trowbridge, Corsham, Swindon and Malmesbury all had floods to varying degrees of severity. The centre of Chippenham looked like a vast lake and shops in Corsham high Street were flooded. Between Warminster and Frome, at Whitbourne Hill, Corsely, the depth of the water on the road was particularly deep. In Frome itself the Market Place was impassable and in the carpet factory fish were seen swimming.

At Chew Magna the River Chew rose at an alarming rate during the evening. Fire officer Frederick Rigler was called to a flooded house at Bishop Sutton but was unable to get through. He turned back only to find that the river had risen to seven feet above the top of the bridge and that his own home was beginning to flood. Timber and rubble from a building site tore through the Queen's Arms public house and the customers fled upstairs to safety. The occupant of the house next door was swept off his feet and carried out into the garden of the pub where he was rescued onto the skittle alley roof by the Landlord's son. Another couple had to bash a hole in their bedroom ceiling to take refuge in the roof space. Brook Cottage in the village was flooded to a depth of 17 feet!

Anne Shute of Chilcompton remembers the flood. She was performing her first night of the 'Beggars Opera' at Statton-on-the-Fosse when suddenly all the lights went out. Even inside they could hear the downpour through the thick roof. Outside the school quadrangle was awash, 'almost brimming over peoples boots.'

Some friends of hers tried to return to Bristol that same night but found all the roads blocked by floods. After trying several routes and failing to get home they drove around for the highest spot and slept in their vehicle overnight. The next day Anne remembers boarding her school coach for the high school at Chew Magna. As the coach filled up she heard more stories of the previous nights flooding.

One Girl from Pensford told how she was awoken by a grinding noise only to find half her bedroom floor missing and her bed at the edge of a gaping drop straight into the street below; or what would have been the road if a raging river hadn't been flowing through it at the time. When the children arrived for school they were sent down to the valley to help the residents. She recalls seeing chicken houses 20 feet up caught in trees and everything below about eight feet was covered in a 'ginger-brown mud.' In the houses the same coloured mud covered all the downstairs furniture making many familiar items unrecognisable.

In Pensford a 12-foot tidal wave swept through the village after a dam at Litton had been breached. The main bridge used by the A37 was swept away just after 10 pm and the residents of Church Street were marooned upstairs. All the furniture from the Rising House Inn was carried off on the torrent as the water reached the top of the main front door. The historic Bridge House lost its front wall at about 4 am and about 40 residents required rescuing. Mr Duckett, a 73 year old retired miner, spent a terrifying night clinging to the rafters in his bungalow at Wollard with only 18 inches between the swirling muddy waters and the roof.

Minor Flooding at Keynsham began about 7 pm. From then to 8 pm the electrical activity of the storm was affecting the radio signals that the emergency services were using. Three people were rescued from Stockwood Vale where a van containing them was partly submerged in three to four foot of rapidly rising water. The escape route involved stumbling through a ploughed field, wading through chest high water and climbing a garden wall in near darkness and torrential rain. Keynsham bridge gave way at approximately 2 am as the River Chew surged through the town sweeping through a group of houses and a bank. Three shops were completely wrecked and at another the rear of the building collapsed.

Several cars were swept into the river. Four people were in one car as it was carried off the bridge and into the river, one was rescued but the others were not seen again. The one man who was saved spent 5 hours in a tree until a member of the R.A.F. reached him. As soon as the man had been put into the dingy it capsized throwing all of the occupants out and into the very fast moving current.

They all luckily scrambled ashore just before the river disappeared under the Keynsham bypass. During an attempt to rescue a Mr and Mrs Stokes, policeman Mike Hedges, who had earlier swam to save three young children, and a Mr Sutton were both in a boat which capsized. Mr Stokes was able to turn the tables, reaching out and rescuing the policeman; then they both set about rescuing Mr Sutton. The following day showed the utter devastation that had taken place the previous night and a huge clear-up operation was swiftly began. In all 24 properties in the Keynsham area were substantially damaged and a further 177 required repairs of some sort. All three road bridges over the River Chew were either destroyed or in need of major repair. The 'County' bridge over the Avon at Willsbridge was also destroyed. On the following Monday the Duke of Edinburgh visited Keynsham and Pensford stating, 'I was told it was bad, but this is absolute chaos.'

In and around Bath hundreds of cars were abandoned as the streets turned into rivers. In the city twenty roads were flooded. At Weston village several roads were devastated as a raging torrent thundered along the streets carrying with it tons of rubble. A garage complete with Ford Anglia car was washed away and ended up 40 feet away. At Larkhill four student nurses were only just saved as their submerging vehicle was drowning. It took five days to pump all the water from the flooded properties in the City.

At Bitton the main road had been transformed into a 40 mph 6 foot deep river. Night shift workers climbed onto the roof of their factory to escape the rising waters. Willsbridge was devastated as the unrecognisable Warmley brook roared through it. A fallen tree smashed into the dam walls which gave way creating a tidal wave which rushed into the main road smashing down walls and sweeping the cars out of the car park of the Queen's Head.

In Bristol a violent midday thunderstorm had marooned shoppers and prevented workers from going out at lunch time ? much worse was to follow. The main reports of flooding began to reach the emergency services about mid evening with the Malago valley, Hartcliffe Way and Bedminster being particularly serious. One man was drowned in Hartcliffe Way as he tried to rescue two women who were stranded up to their necks.

Unfortunately the fire station there was immobilised due to the floods. East Street, Bedminster was soon under three feet of water and the W. D. and H. O. Wills factory was brought to a standstill as the water engulfed machinery, destroyed stock, cut off power and telephones, and damaged the company's very expensive computer. Many shops in the same area were severely inundated and the next morning the whole area was described as the 'Bedminster lake', silent with shop furniture and fittings gently floating about. Some residents in Marksbury Road and Somermead had to be evacuated from their homes and the South Western gas board offices were flooded to a depth of 5 feet. Mike Sheppard lived at 39 Duckmoor Road at the time and remembers 18 inches of water running through his house.

This was by no means the deepest that the water went in south Bristol but he recalls that it took 5 months to have it all cleared up and redecorated which illustrates the scale of the problem. On a lighter note he clearly remembers seeing his Granddad watching the television in his bare feet with everything around him in a sodden state. The Ashton Vale and Ashton Gate districts of Bristol, as seems usual during this sort of weather, were severely flooded and even on Friday the 12th there was still three feet of water on the ground floor of Southbow and Winterstoke House flats. An emergency shopping service for the marooned residents was set up by the pupils of Ashton Park school using canoes and boats.

Winterstoke Road was flooded for -Ws of a mile and the bus depot was cut off, as too was the Marlborough Street bus station and the Brislington depot. The next day the police would not let any of the 80 buses out of the Winterstoke depot because of the wash they would cause which would create more flooding. At Brislington village the brook turned into a swollen river and spread out onto the main A4 road. On the night of the downpour the 10:05 pm bus to Bath became firmly stuck in three foot of flood water at 10:25 with 18 passengers stranded aboard the vehicle. At 11 pm the same bus was now in seven feet of water. Just after midnight two dinghies and the fire service had rescued the thankful passengers. The driver had only managed to survive by climbing up the outside of the bus and climbing through an upstairs window kicked out by the conductor. At Henbury two lorry drivers had a lucky escape as they became stuck in 6 foot of water. A tree then crashed across their vehicles narrowly missing them but this provided their means of escape as they were able to crawl to safety along the branches.

At Eastville there was extensive flooding and over 5 million gallons of water was pumped out of Eastville stadium. A 'thunderbolt' ripped into a Southmead adventure playground and blew a hole in a pipe. The deputy head of Saltford school, Ross Maxwell, recalls the dangerous journey back to Bristol. 'Forked lightning turned night into day over South Bristol: great ultra violet flashes lit up the Bath Road, while alternate thunder rolled across the intervening valley'. In the city as a whole 24 buses were abandoned around the streets. No trains could reach Bristol for several hours as landslides and tunnel flooding prevented progress. Sixty railway passengers took 13 hours to reach Bristol after a night of floods, diversions and more floods.

Lightning strikes were numerous, hitting Bristol Airport, Flax Bourton signal box, and many power cables which put many people into darkness during this terrifying night. At Bower Ashton, Bristol, a keen observer counted lightning every 15 seconds at the height of the storm. Telephones were put out of order and over 16,000 homes were affected by flooding. 4,000 tons of flood debris was removed from the streets of Bristol and 850 gallons of disinfectant were required to clean up homes in the city. A fund was set up and �10,000 was distributed. Free services and food were offered and 75 tons of coal distributed to help the drying out process.

This storm was obviously exceptional but from what the writer knows it could certainly happen again. This region has seen extraordinary rainfall in the past and will therefore probably see it again some day.

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