I just happened to be trawling through some indexes to our records when a subject caught my eye - the Great flood in the Wylye Valley 1841. Now I am just about to visit the Wylye World War 1 Project group, one of several trips to the south of our county this week, and have an eye on the weather since the heavy rain over the last few days. Investigating this story in more detail it appears that the flood took place 170 years ago, almost to the day!  (Apparently there was a similar flood in 1789 around the same time of year - I am taking my waterproofs).  What particularly drew me to the reference was a note concerning a piece of doggerel about the event.

I have always been curious about doggerel and other poetic forms as an historical record commemorating events (and people), especially disasters, such as William McGonagall’s poem on the Tay Railway Bridge disaster of 1879. But what I found was even more astonishing; forget the 8 verses by McGonagall, our document contains 51 verses, in part 1, and a further 25 in part 2, a grand total of 76 stanzas detailing an event that, according to contemporary local newspapers, lasted a mere 12 hours, though with such force and hugely disastrous consequences for the local communities. The document (WSA 1336/98) is a transcript of a letter by Ann Doughty of Hanging Langford to her mother some days after the flood with a doggerel rhyme by an unknown author.

Plaque erected the following year to commemorate the disaster in Tilshead
Ref: P50210

Those who have lived in Wiltshire far longer than I will probably know about the event, but for the uninitiated here is a summary. On 16^th January 1841, two days after a heavy snow storm, a rapid thaw led to a severe flash flood in the area of the Salisbury Plain drained by the River Till, down to the River Wylye. Two communities especially hard hit were Tilshead and Shrewton, where 36 houses were destroyed, 3 people drowned and more than 200 made homeless. The flood reached its peak between 8 pm and 10 pm, but by 3 am the next morning it was completely dry. Ann Doughty provides a remarkable account. She says that the ‘place was all in a sea’ and tells the story of Mr Doughty who was returning from Warminster. At Codford Mr Doughty just escaped drowning when he climbed on to the horse pulling his cart. Shrewton was “ten times worse then it were any where besides, there were more than 3 hundred souls destitute of a home, all their houses flat to the ground. It came on so fast, about nine o’clock in the evening some of the poor souls were gone to bed.  Poor women hanging on the rafters with their babes as long as they could and then obliged to let them drop.” Collections were made to help rebuild the villages and in 1842 Flood Cottages were erected in Tilshead, the rents raising income to help sustain the poor affected by the floods, with money distributed to the poor on January 16^th every year.

 
Article in the Devizes & Wiltshire Gazette, Thursday 21st January, 1841, p.3.
The page also contained stories about the flooding in Maddington, Orcheston, Shrewton, Winterbourne Stoke and Stockton.

The 76 verses are do not convey the immediacy and sheer terror of Ann Doughty’s account, but are compelling nonetheless. The poem starts:

Rise mournful muse and sing the flood

That swept through Sarum’s Plain

Where many a lowly dwelling stood

The Test of wind and rain

The following six verses set the scene until verse 8 when;

At Tilshead first the mighty flood

Its awful powers displayed

Its houses, built with clay or mud

Were soon to ruins laid

The poet then follows the flow of the water through Shrewton, Elston, Maddington, Stoke Winterbourne and Orcheston, and by verse 13:

Now step by step the waters climb

First entering  ay each door

Then in a trifling space of time

They reached the second floor

Verses  17 and 18  confirms Anne Doughty’s stories about the mothers and their children “Each to their tender offspring clung, Unwilling to forgo”; while verses 23 to 42 refer to the scenes around  “Blewdon’s House” which “in ruins lay” and was the scene of the apparent demise a young boy who “Fell from his mother’s hold”. A gentleman named Mills from Elston House heroically appears to save some family members from the “threatening currents sway”. Concluding part 1, verse 51 records:

Thus were Four Hundred mortals driven

Away from house and home

Beneath the Wintry frowns of heaven

To wait till daylight come.

Part two describes the scenes and reaction after the flood:

“The morning dawn at length arose

The flood no longer viewed

But every garden, croft and close

Appeared with ruins strewed

(part 2 verse 1)

Now destitute the people roam

Half naked in despair

Some vainly search their ruined home

And tell what once was there.

(part 2 verse 6)

It also shows how the community came together and raised money for the relief of the disaster as shown. In verse 20 it is noted:

“The kindred breast of charity

Has been wide open thrown

And hearts most bountiful and free

Have much compassion shown

You would be welcome to view the whole poem at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre.  As readers will know from my earlier blogs, I am someone who likes to compile lists, so here it comes …. let us know of your favourite verses that commemorate events in Wiltshire and Swindon’s History and can we better the epic story of the Great Flood of 1841?  I am pleased to see the forecast is now for an improvement in the weather, so I am off to Codford!

Terry

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