Surrounded by Water – Almost
Part 2. The 1947 Floods. The Struggle Against Weather and Water
The cause of the exceptional flood was the great depth of snow which had accumulated between the start of the big freeze on 23 January and the big thaw on 10 March.
On the evening of Sunday 16th March 1947 in the East Anglian Fens, storm-force wind blew the river water over the tops of the riverbanks in sheets of ice-cold spray. Men could only stay up on the banks by clinging to fences or the occasional small bush. Lorries tried to move sacks of clay to where banks needed reinforcing but roads were blocked by fallen trees. The turbulent, darkened water hindered movement of clay by tugs and barges and the swollen rivers made it difficult for them to pass under some bridges. Communication with the control room in Ely was almost impossible because the gale blew down the telephone wires.
A four mile stretch of the river Great Ouse ran north from Covell’s Bridge Sluice at the north western end of Swavesey Parish, past two public houses, The Pike and Eel and The Boat, which was adjacent to Brownshill Staunch in Over Fen, to as far as Hermitage Marina.at Earith. Since mid-day on that Sunday two gangs of workmen, each assisted by German prisoners of war, some fifty men in all, had been working strenuously along this bank, strengthening the places where waves were over-topping. They filled sacks with soil from the fen below then two men dragged each sack to the top of the steep slope some 6 metres higher up. The slippery bank was washed ankle deep in water being blown over by the storm. It was bitterly cold. The noise of the water and wind was thunderous. On top of the bank a man could hold himself still only by great effort and could move forward only by staggering bent nearly double. By 6 p.m. they had already held back the flood by stopping three threatened breaches, but they were barely holding their own because by now water was spilling over the bank here and there along the 4 miles. Just as darkness fell one man set out against the wind to move from one gang to the other. On the way he came upon a wire fence with a wooden stile crossing the bank where he noticed a serious breach was starting, with water already pouring through. He rushed to summon both gangs of workers to deal with the breach which was a short distance north of The Boat public house at Brownshill Staunch.
A young farmer who had served in the Navy during the war volunteered to be on top at the front to place in position the bags of soil the others brought to him. He had to cling onto the stile to avoid being swept over by the force of the wind and water. Conditions were so severe that supplying one man at the top was all the entire team could manage. They lit hurricane lamps to help in the darkness, but these were repeatedly blown out by the gale. One of the men tried to get news through to the command centre at Ely to summon urgent help but he failed because telephone lines were down, and roads were blocked. As if in defiance of the storm-force wind there were stars in the sky and the man at the top remembered afterwards glancing up briefly and recognising familiar constellations as he had so often done during his years at sea. By just after 9 p.m. the whole gang were wet, muddy, extremely cold and completely exhausted and whereas they had successfully built a strong wall of bags across the centre of the breach, water was still flowing past both ends. Then they noticed another small breach was starting a few metres downstream and there might have been many more such small breaches along the 4 miles for all they knew. This is when they realised that they could not win.
Nobody was there when the massive burst actually occurred but on the other side of the river on the southern edge of Bluntisham villagers living adjacent to the flood plain were watching the water slowly rise inside their houses when, just before midnight, the level rapidly dropped a few cm. They correctly deduced that a major breach had occurred nearby. At the wire fence and wooden stile, the water was roaring through the darkness to the fen below and this was the start of the widest breach and the most serious flooding of the East Anglian Fens. Across the Fens, other serious breaches occurred on the river Wissey to the west of Hilgay and on the river Little Ouse to the west of Lakenheath and on the river Welland, to the north of Crowland but the biggest and most catastrophic breach, leading to the largest area of flooded agricultural land, occurred in Over Fen.