‘Our town has four rivers – and they’ve all ended up in my house’

At the beginning of the week, as the waters in the River Severn began to rise and people in Tewkesbury braced (as we have so many times before) for a great flood, I must admit to feeling quietly confident. 

Our house – a late Georgian terrace sandwiched between the river and the ancient abbey at the southern edge of the old town – was flooded once before in 2007. Back then, we were entirely unprepared. It had poured with rain for what seemed like weeks but the flood itself happened very suddenly, tumbling through town, not from the river but from the Cotswold Hills above. We had no defences around the house and water came gushing into the kitchen. At its peak, it was about four feet deep. 

Then, we lived on the top floor for six months and spent £60,000 repairing the damage, most of which we eventually got back on insurance. 

In the years since we have got organised. We’ve spent a further £10,000 shoring up the house – we’ve put new walls in, installed floodgates and pumps. We’ve raised everything in the kitchen so that every unit, all white goods and the Aga are all a good few inches above the ground. 

When the waters rose so rapidly on Monday I thought we’d be ok. I took the car and put it in a safer place on higher ground just to be safe, but suspected I was overreacting. 

On Tuesday, the water level appeared to have peaked – the danger had surely passed. We’d had a number of near misses in the 16 years since the last flood. This looked set to be another. 

Then quite suddenly, on Wednesday afternoon, all hell broke loose. 

The floodwater came right up to the gates at the back of the garden and down the road at the front so we were cut off – like a little island surrounded by water. 

My wife, Marion, was trying to shore up the floodgates at the back with sandbags when it gave way under the weight of the water. I was inside when I heard her yell out: “the damned thing’s collapsed!” as water gushed up the garden. 

We have a secondary gate at the backdoor which held it for a bit, but the water was so extensive there was really nothing we could do. Before long, the downstairs was flooded once more. 

We held on for a bit, sheltering upstairs – the electrics downstairs are on a different circuit because of the flood risk, so we could survive up there for a while. We turned the gas off because we were frightened we might get an explosion. When the toilets wouldn’t flush we admitted defeat. The fire service helped us to evacuate. 

I’m 75 and suffer from mobility problems and my wife had a serious cancer operation last year, so neither of us is as fit as we once were. They were brilliant, helping us into the boat and ferrying us up the road. By that point, every house on the terrace was flooded out. 

I checked us in to the one hotel in the town which is on a hill and there we will stay for the foreseeable. 

Everyone has done a marvellous job of helping neighbours. On our street, a nice lad from the local school was shoring up all the fences – he couldn’t have done more for us. And all the authorities we dealt with on the ground were so helpful. 

We do feel rather let down by the environment agency and the local authority, though. You feel they could have predicted this might happen and done more to defend Tewkesbury from such devastation. 

After all, this isn’t a modern phenomenon. Local lore has it that in the 18th century, the vicar rowed around the nave in a rowing boat. 

It seems to me that with the powers that be there is a very vague idea of what a floodplain is. 

Seven years ago, we were told by the local council that money had been made available to produce extra defences. Unfortunately, that seems to have disappeared during the Covid period and the defences never materialised. 

It doesn’t help that while most little towns like ours might have one river running through them, we have four – and they’ve all ended up in my sitting room. 

They tend to flood together though this time the worst offender is the Severn, which is the biggest of the four. 

We haven’t yet returned to the house to survey the damage but we are trying to remain cheerful. We moved anything precious upstairs before the worst of it, though neither of us was strong enough to move furniture. 

It’s tempting to sell up and move, but I fear we would struggle to sell our little house on the floodplain, however pretty it is. Instead, I suspect we will do as we did last time – clean it up and start again. 

In 2007, the insurance company provided us with M&S ready meals to keep us going in the makeshift kitchen we put together in a spare bedroom. 

I don’t think either of us could go through all that again, but we will do our best to make the best of it. 

As told to Eleanor Steafel