– The Dreadful Warning
Published in Windlesora 01 (1982)
© WLHG
Cold black flood water creeping inexorably towards one’s home is an appalling sight. Many residents of Windsor, Clewer, Eton and 0ld Windsor suffered this experience when the Thames flood swept down the valley in March 1947.
Centuries of floods have carved the Thames valley into what it is, and while work has been done to reduce -or even obviate – the effects of ‘ordinary’ floods, catastrophic floods (such as the records show occur on average two or three times every century) will still occur. Therefore, everyone with property in the flood area should be insured against flood damage. Reading the small print on a policy AFTER flooding can be frustrating because some policies exclude flood damage unless an extra premium has been paid.
How often we are told that the weather is the coldest, or wettest or whatever for many years, but history is only repeating itself, and catastrophic floods have occurred since times ancient beyond records. The usual aftermath is to ‘be prepared’ for the next one, but when the interval is a long one, memories fade, and optimism replaces knowledge of the facts, which are that while the river board engineers carry out works and maintenance that tend to contain ‘ordinary’ floods, catastrophic floods are, and always will be, virtually uncontrollable. The Chief Engineer stated in his report after the 1947 flood that it would take two or even three rivers to contain the volume of flood water rushing down the valley after abnormal rain, especially when the land is supersaturated or, as in 1947, rendered impervious by deep frost and aggravated by snow drifts.
The Deputy Ranger of Windsor Great Park, Sir Eric Savill, said in 1947 that the water ran off the Park as off a slate roof. This resulted in local flooding from streams such as the Bourne Brook in the Bourne Avenue – Victor Road area, when the stream burst its banks and flowed through the houses in its path. This was two or three days before the main flood reached Windsor. No warning was received.
It seemed as though the winter would never end in 1946/47. It had been a poor summer, the war had left everyone more or less exhausted, and January brought frost and snow. February was even worse with snow covering most of the country. In hilly districts villages were marooned, trains snowed up and cars lost in drifts.
Stocks of fuel were low, and there were power cuts. Coke could be obtained from gasworks if you took your own sack and barrow – gas then was made from coal and oil, natural gas was unheard of. There had been a minor flood in December, but nothing much – except that the ground was becoming saturated, and the snow represented whole lakes of water if there was a quick thaw. And there was, plus heavy rain which fell on March 10th, followed by even heavier rain – nearly one inch. On March 14th the thaw found the ground hard and so the water continued down hill into the streams and rivers, which rose at an alarming rate – sometimes more than 1} inches an hour. 01d hands prepared to visit relatives living on high ground. The Thames topped its banks of 14th March as did other rivers. The Colne flooded Denham, part of Iver was inundated and Colnbrook High Street was up to 18 inches deep. Saturday brought floods to Wraysbury – Welley Road was a sheet of water, Boveney and Dorney were flooded. At Windsor the Borough Engineer Geoffrey Baker called a staff meeting, and arrangements were made to watch the river level at the Racecourse and up-stream, day and night. Soon the water spread southwards checking for a while in Clewer at the ancient road line along Balloon Meadow north boundary, then rolling across Maidenhead Road and up Vale Road.
There were only vague recollections from the oldest inhabitants about the disastrous flood of 1894, except one Oxford Road lady who said SHE had been flooded twice before and felt a bit old for a third inundation, so could she please be evacuated, and could someone get her furniture upstairs. There was a lot of uncoordinated activity by the pessimists, while the optimists stayed warm and dry indoors – until the water started to come up through their floorboards and oozed up from low places in their gardens. Bungalows and ground floor dwellings had to be evacuated. The services – telephones, gas and electricity – began to fail. As the Goswell Road gasworks became flooded a diver was sent for to open a valve on a small main linking to Slough, but this supply could not penetrate the water filled mains of Windsor and Eton. There was a run on candles and these were soon sold out. Paraffin lamps were improvised, some rather dangerously with wicks pulled through a hole in the top of a tin. The electric railway at Datchet became a canal between the platforms, as it did at Wraysbury. The Western line to Slough kept going, with its steam trains, but the coal yard was flooded and water swirling round the arches looked ominous. Meetings in every parish tried to cope with the situation, but requests for help could not be acceded to – nearly everyone in the flooded valleys of England had their own troubles. Maidenhead was flooded throughout its low-lying area, as were parts of Staines. Eton was badly affected. The story of an accident at Welley Corner was circulating – a lorry carrying evacuees ran off the road, no telephones near were working, but there was an amateur radio operator nearby and a message asking for help was transmitted. Someone in Italy heard the call, passed it on to London from whence the police telephoned Slough. Sadly, by this time help had already reached the stranded party… While large areas were in serious trouble, most areas were trouble free and from these complaints poured into the local authorities, e.g., that the dustbin had not been emptied. The refuse freighters could not reach the tips, and the men were manning the boats. Mail arrived more or less as normal but in the Council offices was stamped ‘DELAYED BY FLOODS’ just in case of trouble later.
Along the river bank upstream, trees in danger of being uprooted and swept away, thus putting Windsor Bridge with its vital services at risk, were blown up by a party of Scots Guards from Victoria Barracks. Arrangements were also made for this party to blow up any large boats that broke away from their moorings and were swept downstream, as St Marks’ “Ark” had been in 1894.
The roar and vibration from the mass of water passing under Windsor Bridge was alarming. Afterwards it was found that large round boulders had rolled downstream, swept along by the raging torrent and a mass of sand and gravel had collected at Romney Weir. Clewer Village was an island around the church, Maidenhead Road was impassable by car, as were Vale Road, Buckland Crescent, Rays Avenue, Arthur Road, Vansittart Road and Alma Road north of Bexley Street. Boats plied to and from the slope in Alma Road by what was then ‘The Clarence’ public house, now the ‘Copper Horse’ in Ward Royal. The’ tatters is built upon the site of several streets that were flooded in 1894 and 1947, including Sydney Place, which was another embarkation place. Traffic between Dedworth and Windsor had to use Imperial Road or go via Clewer Green as Clarence Road was impassable between Imperial Road and Alma Road. Imperial Road soon became potholed and corrugated under the weight of traffic, as its clay subsoil was saturated. Oxford Road was a river, an odd stream of gas meters floated along Goswell Road from the Gasworks and the coke pile at the Boys’ Grammar School in Maidenhead Road slowly streamed away in the flood. Eton High Street was just passable but the wash damaged shop fronts and doors. This was a common danger wherever vehicles could still move. If you went slowly you might stop in the floodwater but going faster gave a chance of rolling out by momentum if the engine stopped as it often did. But a fast moving vehicle was a menace with its ‘bow wave’ like a destroyer breaking down garden walls and fences, shop windows and doors.
The basement of the Theatre Royal was flooded, as were basements in many places remote from the flooded area and some not so remote such as Clarence Crescent, due to surcharged sewers.
Geoffrey Baker’s Borough Engineer’s Department worked 24 hours a day, at first from the old depot at 16 Alma Road (now part of Ward Royal) then, as the floods deepened the CID room at the old St Leonards Road Police Station was offered – an offer which had to be withdrawn as the volume of telephone traffic swamped the small switchboard. The Windsor Telephone Exchange came to the rescue. There was a basement under the old exchange on Bachelors Acre and the GPO engineers were soon festooning the ceiling with emergency lines from the manual exchange above, dropping leads to telephones on furniture hurriedly assembled below, including bunks from air raid shelters not yet cleared. Posters were printed showing who was doing what, and where communications were a problem. There were sections to deal with water purity tests and chemical closet emptying several hundred were obtained from a building contractor together with a high platform diesel lorry from which someone solemnly did what was necessary to enable upstairs residents with no WC to enjoy home comforts. Emergency work by guardsmen called by Scots Guards radio by the Borough Engineer erected clay dams from the Princess Avenue housing site works to protect the Eton Waterworks wells and even more vital, the electric power transformer. As this work was in full swing Mr Gosling, an electricity board engineer, stood by to switch off as the water rose to within half an inch of certain danger level. The electric motors were kept running by this tiny margin and the water supply of Windsor and Eton was maintained. In 1894 the flood had stopped the pumps.
When the Borough Engineer personally cleared the baulks of timber closing the gap in the river wall at the Railway Arches, Barry Avenue, a torrent of impounded water swept the timbers away, as the river level had by then dropped well below the land flood level. Barry Avenue was the result of the flood protection work undertaken many years previously by Mayor Frederick Dyson, whose memorial drinking fountain is by the river, opposite Goswell Road. Town refuse was tipped for a long period to raise the road level above that of Alexandra Gardens. In 1947 the latter remained a lake for many weeks after the rest of the flood water drained away necessitating batteries of great pumps working night and day to clear it.
Many of the 1947 ‘relief‘ facilities are no longer available. Who can now commandeer a fleet of punts? These were manned by a detachment of Scots guardsmen whose NCO thought the situation could be dealt with as a light parade ground exercise. Every punt turned on its side and sank as the soldiers’ feet stepped on one side with military precision. After that, they entered the boats more ‘Navy fashion‘. The punts were brought to the old Borough Depot in Alma Road by the soldiers who waded chest deep along Romney Walk to bring them into the town. Bachelors Acre was a transport park where RAF sleeping vans and private caravans were used by the relief workers to snatch a few hours’ sleep. The Royal Free School provided an emergency canteen for workers and for residents displaced by the floods. Windsorian coaches, flooded out from their premises in Alma Road were parked on Church House school field – land now occupied by Windsor and Maidenhead College. War surplus building materials and other scarce supplies were brought from the abundance of the American Forces depot on the racecourse at Newbury – we were allowed to take anything useful for flood relief, the lorries having to take devious routes to avoid the flood areas. NALGO members at Windsor decided not to claim overtime for the long hours – some worked all night to arrange emergency services such as milk distribution from temporary depots at the edge of the flooded area, from which the roundsmen wearing thigh boots could either pull punts loaded with crates or try to pull themselves along a flooded street by clutching at the front walls and fences.
Steam trains were able to evacuate Eton College boys in 1894 but the electric trains were unable to get through the floods at Datchet in 1947, where the only public transport was a DUKW. Another of these amphibious vehicles served Clewer from a depot in Sydney Place – the marks where it got stuck under the railway arch at Barry Avenue at 2 a.m. one morning can still be seen. That journey was to collect waterworks repair man Bob Press from Gardeners Cottages in Arthur Road, to deal with a burst main in Peascod Street. Water mains and service pipes tend to break under the softened roads and footpaths, sometimes by reason of heavy vehicles taking to the higher footpaths leaving the more deeply flooded roads. Warnings were given to boil drinking water, which was not easy without gas or electricity, A glimmer of gas was left in the flooded mains but was not to be used by reason of the risk of explosion from air entering the pipes.
Coal was inaccessible in the flood; some people were able to get wood blocks from the old surfacing of the High Street in Windsor which fortuitously was being stripped and replaced by asphalt until the snow stopped progress. Candles were scarce – some were delivered by the late Councillor Ken Darville as part of his 5/- (25p) emergency ration packet, the contents of which included cooking fat and margarine and similar basic items. Mr Darville waded in thigh boots behind a high platform diesel lorry which could get through. Many vehicles were brought to a standstill by reason of the exhaust being submerged or the ignition swamped. Windsor Council provided lines with hooks at one end which were lowered from a bedroom window to the milkman or postman – who also came round by boat – and one baker specialised in throwing loaves through open bedroom windows, his aim eventually became quite good. The many pairs of thigh boots required were secured by sending a taxi to London to get a stock before everyone else got there. Rubber boots and naval sea boot stockings were similarly obtained from Admiralty stores. The sea boot stockings, in oiled wool, saved many a flood worker from getting bad feet due to long hours in rubber boots.
Those residents who were able to remain in their homes did not get much sleep – with the roar from the river in flood nearby and the passage of boats carrying workers around for one reason or another. The nights were moonless, there were no streetlights, and it was a bit hairy rowing along a flooded street, lit only by the odd candle left burning in a window to guide someone home. You could, of course, sing the Song of the Volga Boatman, or the Eton Boating Song, to keep up your spirits!
Mayor Fuzzens sent an SOS to Whitehall which was headlined on the front page of the Sunday Express. All the Government departments responded, especially the RAF and the Navy. The Medical Officer of Health, Dr M.T. Jones, and his staff arranged evacuation of bedridden and disabled people – the ambulance men sometimes had to slide a stretcher somewhat alarmingly down a steep ladder, and surveys to find out who was in need of help went on continuously.
A convoy of RAF radio lorries arrived at midnight and the crews were somehow fed and distributed to replace flooded telephone communications. Some pub cellars flooded which did not improve the beer. Sanitary Inspectors led by F. Arnold were kept busy checking and condemning flood-contaminated rationed foods including butter and cooking fats, so that shopkeepers could get replacements. Each service tried to keep the others informed of points of interest, but it was some time before chaos was more or less ended – in the opinion of the staff if not the victims. By the 20th March it seemed that the peak had been reached and the waters began slowly to fall. After a period of days, the time finally came when the street gullies could be seen as whirlpools. The crowns of the higher roads and footpaths reappeared only to be found to be covered with stinking silt – in times of flood operating the cistern merely transfers the sewage from the lavatory pan to the street. Men with hoses could wash down contaminated streets but housewives were faced with soaked carpets, ruined linoleum, clothes, boots and shoes and other articles lost on the floor during the flood. Few articles of furniture survived unharmed.
People were anxious to get back into their houses, but cesspools had been flooded, sewers had overflowed, and there was an obvious health problem. In the event, supplies of ‘off-the-ration’ soap, disinfectant and even American washing machine detergent were distributed and the great mopping-up-cum-spring-clean commenced. Pathetic piles of ruined goods were put out for the dustmen – clothing was still rationed and coupons were necessary to get replacements. The allocation was meagre. Replacement furniture was also scarce, some ‘utility’ was available on special coupon but only if you had children.
Large pumps were mobilised to get rid of the pockets and large pools of water, stagnant and smelly, which appeared to be another health hazard. Aircraft engine heaters and hot air hoses were borrowed from British European Airways (B.E.A.) Heathrow and other airfields to help dry over 300 saturated rooms each requiring 10 gallons of petrol at 2/- (10p) per gallon, but the hot air split wooden furniture and drying wallpaper peeled off the damp walls and smelt horrible. Laundries helped to clean and dry mattresses and bedding – an untold amount of help was given without thought of reward or payment.
But eventually the sun shone again, the cherry and almond trees burst into bloom. At Windsor the Town Clerk R. Webster Storr and the Borough Engineer G.S. Baker wrote their reports (the Borough Engineer headed his ‘FOR MY SUCCESSOR’ – I wonder where the new Authority keep their copy) . The Borough Accountant D.R. Harman totted up the cost – over £20,000 for relief measures, say £350,000 nowadays. Some of this came from the Lord Mayor of London’s Fund which was subscribed to worldwide, much by countries now regarded as very poor, even Third World countries now in serious trouble themselves. Gifts from overseas poured in – from Canada, America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and other well-wishers. Some came via the Red Cross. A million pounds was added by the Government. In Windsor, a flat rate grant of £7 was paid for lost linoleum and other claims were examined by the Rent Officer, Mr Bellringer, for a further grant. When it was all over, several thousand pounds remained and were put into a Mayoral Fund ‘for the next time’.
There was a clamour for a warning system, which was eventually devised. A reminder of this is the coloured disc board still to be seen in the window of the Head Post Office in Peascod Street. These were also maintained at 10 or so other sites around the various districts. Flood wardens were appointed and given thigh boots, but of course these have faded away. A prohibition on building in the flood area of Windsor was proposed and defeated, except that ground floor levels of new dwellings have to be at least as high as the 1947 level in the various areas.
The river bursts its banks and overflows above Clewer at the site known in medieval times as ‘Breach Field’ It then fills the ‘saucer’ formed by the boundaries of the river wall and the higher parts of the town and cannot escape downstream easily. Thus, it is possible. for the flood level to be impounded at the ‘upstream’ level until the river defences are deliberately breached at one of the gaps filled by heavy flood boards which keep out lesser floods.
History repeated itself during the September 1968 Surrey catastrophic flooding from the North Downs valleys of the Mole, Wey and Loddon rivers, when floods up to 5 feet in depth followed a series of heavy thunderstorms which fortunately missed the Thames Valley and Windsor. These Surrey floods showed up defects in the local and national government services, not all of which provide a 24-hour service. All communications except individual services radios failed, and one service could not ‘talk’ to another, as different wavelengths were used. When telephone links had ‘drowned’, there were severe problems and most telephones together with gas and electricity services tend to fail under flood conditions. The old Royal Borough of New Windsor concentrated, after 1947, Police, Fire and local government services in the Kipling Memorial Building area, but the new authority has sold the latter to Rank Hovis McDougal for demolition and rebuilding as private offices. The local government services left in Windsor have reverted to the Sheet Street area, which was found inconvenient for residents of a smaller developed area in pre-war days.
The list of routes, streets and services that will fail in the next catastrophic flood is a long one. The new underground car parks at King Edward Court and in William Street will be unusable – and when the flood waters recede will be found to contain a deposit of sewage contaminated mud. This will also be the fate of the proposed ‘River Street Hotel’ underground car park, where the existing surface car park was the emergency boat depot in March 1947.
Precautions? Well, you have been warned, so find out if YOUR home might be flooded – check the areas on the plan. Don’t forget to look at your household insurance policy. A neighbour who experienced the 1947 flood might be able to advise upon the depth of water to be expected. Except in the Goswell Road Roundabout area, in the vicinity of the well-named Noah’s Ark public house, depths over roads rarely exceeded 2 feet and in fringe areas were less than a foot.
Gordon Cullingham
Comment by the Webmaster in 2023. Since this article was published in 1981, it has also found its way, with our permission and blessing, on to the Royal Windsor Web Site. There, over the years, additional photos and commentary have been added by their webmaster. It is well worth popping over to see.
Windsor Local History Group 