Is Pendon OK?

[5050]

With all the horrendous stories about the flooding in the Thames Valley does anyone know if Pendon is safe?  A lot of the images on TV news are in that area.  The Vale layout should be alright being on an upstairs floor but the Madder Valley and the viaduct are ground level.

[Horsetan]

At least the river details will be realistic.

[5050]

At least the river details will be realistic.

Hopefully not to realistic!

[Jeff Smith]

It was fine last Saturday when I visited.

[Kenton]

 

With all the horrendous stories about the flooding in the Thames Valley.

Much exaggerated! As usual. The water is overflowing rivers onto their flood plains as it has always done. Those living in mills, riverside dwellings, locks, islands are flooding as they often do. The news reporting that it is the worst for 10 years pretty much confirms it all, 10% chance of it being worse than it is. Nothing extraordinary.

[petethemole]

Villages in the areas of flood plains date from Saxon times or earlier and were always built on areas of higher ground rather than the parts that regularly flooded (probably annually in those days). Hence they don't flood now. Look at Muchelney in Somerset ('elney' = island). Long Wittenham is on rising ground clear of the water meadows. I haven't even been there (yet) but maps and Google Streetview confirm it. Our Saxon and Medieval forebears weren't stupid.  

 

Pete

[Horsetan]

 Much exaggerated! As usual. The water is overflowing rivers onto their flood plains as it has always done. Those living in mills, riverside dwellings, locks, islands are flooding as they often do. The news reporting that it is the worst for 10 years pretty much confirms it all, 10% chance of it being worse than it is. Nothing extraordinary.

Move along now, ladies and gents, nothing to see here, nothing to see....

[meil]

Villages in the areas of flood plains date from Saxon times or earlier and were always built on areas of higher ground rather than the parts that regularly flooded (probably annually in those days). Hence they don't flood now. Look at Muchelney in Somerset ('elney' = island). Long Wittenham is on rising ground clear of the water meadows. I haven't even been there (yet) but maps and Google Streetview confirm it. Our Saxon and Medieval forebears weren't stupid.  

 

Pete

I always have a chuckle when shown a picture of Tewksbury with the Abbey standing above the surrounding flood. The old monks weren't stupid either!

[newbryford]

I always have a chuckle when shown a picture of Tewksbury with the Abbey standing above the surrounding flood. The old monks weren't stupid either!

 

Places of religion and power (castles etc) are often found on higher ground so that they can survey all that they rule....

 

My local town centre - Clitheroe in Lancs - is built around a limestone knoll. The two high points on the knoll are a castle and a church.

 

Cheers,

Mick

 

. Our Saxon and Medieval forebears weren't stupid.  

 

 

 

But today's builders and town planners are.......... 

 

Cheers,

Mick

[The Stationmaster]

 Much exaggerated! As usual. The water is overflowing rivers onto their flood plains as it has always done. Those living in mills, riverside dwellings, locks, islands are flooding as they often do. The news reporting that it is the worst for 10 years pretty much confirms it all, 10% chance of it being worse than it is. Nothing extraordinary.

Most of the Thames flooding is lower than the 2003 level and looking at some of my old photos today in some places it is lower than the summer 2007 flooding.  Someone commented in our local paper yesterday that 'it's bad but not as bad as it was in 2003 when our cafe was flooded' - the cafe is built on a spot which flooded every Spring back in the days before we had a succession of dry winters so it;s hardly surprising the water is now lapping at its foundations.

 

Basically on the Thames it is normal 'high' flood level which comes along every few years but what is not so usual is that it is occurring at other than the normal seasonal flooding time.  I really do wonder what they'll have left to say if we get a '50 year flood' (now overdue) or even more so a '100 year flood' (also overdue) on the Thames.

[Zero Gravitas]

5050, on 11 Jan 2014 - 12:33, said:

With all the horrendous stories about the flooding in the Thames Valley does anyone know if Pendon is safe?  A lot of the images on TV news are in that area.  The Vale layout should be alright being on an upstairs floor but the Madder Valley and the viaduct are ground level.

 

I can confirm that it is fine - I live in Didcot and am a Pendon volunteer. The road north from Long Wittenham to Clifton Hampden has been closed since Tuesday, but the museum itself if fine and has been open this weekend.

 

Best Regards,

 

ZG.

[RJS1977]

Most of the Thames flooding is lower than the 2003 level and looking at some of my old photos today in some places it is lower than the summer 2007 flooding.  Someone commented in our local paper yesterday that 'it's bad but not as bad as it was in 2003 when our cafe was flooded' - the cafe is built on a spot which flooded every Spring back in the days before we had a succession of dry winters so it;s hardly surprising the water is now lapping at its foundations.

 

 

That's practically word for word what some of the Cholsey & Wallingford volunteers were telling me yesterday lunchtime. (The CWR's also well clear of the flooding though some of the neighbouring fields are waterlogged. Though of course we're in our closed maintenance season at the moment anyway)..

[ForestPines]

Our Saxon and Medieval forebears weren't stupid.

 

Pete

Some of them must have been - but I doubt the houses of the stupid ones lasted very well!

 

Medieval abbeys, as a rule, heavily farmed their fisheries, so any river near to an abbey is likely to have been "improved" and rerouted to increase the usability of the river for fishing and mills.

[The Lurker]

As the old Sunday School song goes: "the wise man built his house upon the rock"

[Talltim]

Gibraltar?

[black and decker boy]

I always have a chuckle when shown a picture of Tewksbury with the Abbey standing above the surrounding flood. The old monks weren't stupid either!

 

I am a civil engineer and have always had a quote stuck in my mind from my early training days.

 

Never buy a house lower than the local church.

 

It is very rare that you see a flooded church (York perhaps being the odd one out).

 

I do wonder sometimes about the big housebuilders and regulators \ planning depts. Near Caversham, a new development of 10+ houses has just been completed. It is in the Vee between 2 main roads but it is 15ft lower than both. If their ground drainage ever blocks then they will be flooded up to 1st floor level. They're not at risk from the Thames being a few hundred feet above it but run off from fields and highway is proving a worse problem around the Chilterns than the rivers.

[dibber25]

In 17 years that I lived in Old Windsor my house (built 1955) was never even threatened with flooding. Some 10 years ago I noticed that it is no longer insurable. Today that part of Old Windsor is on the news (The church, incidentally, is much closer to the river than my home was) as being flooded. What changed in the meantime? Well, for starters they built a flood channel to protect the Maidenhead area, and it discharges back into the Thames at Old Windsor. I have no idea whether it affects the situation or not, but it does make you wonder. Sensible planning went out of the window some years ago, in the quest to find more development land.

CHRIS LEIGH

[The Stationmaster]

In 17 years that I lived in Old Windsor my house (built 1955) was never even threatened with flooding. Some 10 years ago I noticed that it is no longer insurable. Today that part of Old Windsor is on the news (The church, incidentally, is much closer to the river than my home was) as being flooded. What changed in the meantime? Well, for starters they built a flood channel to protect the Maidenhead area, and it discharges back into the Thames at Old Windsor. I have no idea whether it affects the situation or not, but it does make you wonder. Sensible planning went out of the window some years ago, in the quest to find more development land.

CHRIS LEIGH

 

There have been lots of complaints that the building of the Maidenhead & Windsor Flood Relief Channel (now called the Jubille something or other I think) has led to flooding further downstream.  I do wonder if schemes like this are tested out at the Hydraulics Research establishment, or whatever it is now called, in the way such things used to be tested?

 

 

I am a civil engineer and have always had a quote stuck in my mind from my early training days.

 

Never buy a house lower than the local church.

 

It is very rare that you see a flooded church (York perhaps being the odd one out).

 

I do wonder sometimes about the big housebuilders and regulators \ planning depts. Near Caversham, a new development of 10+ houses has just been completed. It is in the Vee between 2 main roads but it is 15ft lower than both. If their ground drainage ever blocks then they will be flooded up to 1st floor level. They're not at risk from the Thames being a few hundred feet above it but run off from fields and highway is proving a worse problem around the Chilterns than the rivers.

 

Again one wonders about testing for some of these schemes - presumably there isn't any!  Caversham and Reading would both be in a major state if even the 50 year flood reappears while the 100 year flood will perhaps make quite a mess of the pretty new north side station entrance as the last flooded the roads etc right up to the bridge at the west end of Reading station according to a contemporaneous engraving.  The Thames can get very nasty if it floods really badly although the locks and weirs are now able to control the worst effects.

[caradoc]

Whenever I see demands for more flood protection at any particular location, I cannot help wonder where the water diverted by such schemes goes ? The logical answer would seem to be further downstream, so does building flood defences at one place not simply create a risk of more flooding somewhere else ? The water has to go somewhere !

[Adrian Wintle]

Exactly! Which is why the Dutch are now implementing a different approach: water storage. Draining it away ASAP might be looking good politically locally, but as experienced, it aggravates problems down river. Storing water in a location designed to store it, damage will be limited while still protecting property locally. Don't be fooled: a square mile with a depth of 10' is a lot of water! It can either be released in a managed way later, or even syphoned into fresh water reservoirs as the UK has some serious issues with that. The technology is available, it's the political will to 'sacrifice' agriculture land to such scheme that needs grass-root support. Contact your MP if you wish to share your opinion about it

 

This is the same strategy as in the Los Angeles area:

The Sepulveda flood control basin fills up to limit the water released down the LA River. In 1993? it flooded to the top of the light standards on the Burbank Avenue bridge. That's a lot of water.

https://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&ll=34.173323,-118.480167&spn=0.06107,0.082827&t=m&z=14

 

Adrian

[The Stationmaster]

Exactly! Which is why the Dutch are now implementing a different approach: water storage. Draining it away ASAP might be looking good politically locally, but as experienced, it aggravates problems down river. Storing water in a location designed to store it, damage will be limited while still protecting property locally. Don't be fooled: a square mile with a depth of 10' is a lot of water! It can either be released in a managed way later, or even syphoned into fresh water reservoirs as the UK has some serious issues with that. The technology is available, it's the political will to 'sacrifice' agriculture land to such scheme that needs grass-root support. Contact your MP if you wish to share your opinion about it

 

I think the problem in Britain is that developers and their mates would far sooner build things on such land rather than do anything else with it.  Not far from Reading there is an area which used to be managed water meadow - in other words it did exactly what you suggest although it also had agricultural value.  None of it is now managed  and a substantial chunk of it has been excavated for gravel extraction so the upper covering of soil no longer acts as a sponge to soak up seasonal flooding.  Some of the nearby low lying area has been turned over to industrial use while there has also been housing development on unmanaged low-lying land.

 

And everybody in creation except those who caused it are nowadays being blamed for the flooding - this is flooding which always happened every year but has been made far worse and more widespread by removing meadowland and drainage ditches which did much to control and regulate that flooding.  Similarly upstream of Reading Purley (where we didn't buy a house) suffered a large housing development on the flood plain - hence less land to absorb the water and more water to go downstream, as well as flooding parts of the housing development every now & then.  

[Kenton]

 

although the locks and weirs are now able to control the worst effects.

But I wonder just how much these are used to "control" as in "prevent" flooding further downstream.So London - much of which would otherwise be under water - and some would say should be - is protected at the expense of the flood plain above Richmond/Windsor/Reading.

 

I think builders take little account of the fact that every house built involves the placement of a concrete plinth and all the infrastructure including minimal drains which removes land that would otherwise soak up water increasing the run-off ans speed at which water reaches the main drains (rivers). Failure to aggressively dredge river beds and estuaries for fear of upsetting the fish/habitat, to increase water depth and to simply clean out drainage channels/systems all go a long way to mismanaging flooding.

 

But people have always congregated along the riverside, near bridges and water based industry ... it is just that they think for some reason these days everyone else should compensate them for the blatantly obvious risk they are taking.

[ForestPines]

I recently read that the Thames Barrier now isn't raised to protect against storm surges as often as it is raised to alleviate upstream flooding. The Barrier is raised at low tide to turn the Thames from Richmond to Woolwich into an empty reservoir ready to receive floodwaters coming down the river; if it wasn't and the water coming downriver met an incoming tide, the upstream banks might be overtopped more.