Experiments set up after floods of 2007 are exploring alternatives to costly concrete defences as funding dries up
After the torrential rain of Christmas Eve, logs stacked outside Helen Webber and John Hesp’s thatched cottage were washed away down the lane. The rust-red river that surges past their 400-year-old home in the north Somerset village of Bossington was rising rapidly, and automated alarm calls by phone had awoken them in the early hours.
The couple have endured the misery of being flooded three times in last 20 years. But this time, despite the extreme downpour, the river did not burst its banks and their home was saved.
“It was a narrow escape,” says Webber, who remembers well the trauma of previous floods. “It is really horrible, everything smells and is dirty and you have to chuck a lot of stuff away. You’re left with a damp, empty shell.”
Webber’s home, and 100 others nearby, are now protected by a radical landscape experiment that passed its first severe test during the recent weeks of extreme weather. Reversing centuries of efforts to drain land, dredge rivers and rush water to the sea, banks have been built to deliberately flood fields. Historic water meadows and silted-up ponds have been re-established, while old ditches and tracks have been dammed and new woods planted.
