Re: [Sheflug] Normality

[(Ted Harding) <ted.harding@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 28-Jun-07 09:21:15, Steve Fisher wrote:
> Morris, David (Allvac, UK) wrote:
>> I hope everyone in Sheffield is getting back to some sense of
>> normality after the "fun" of the last couple of days and that
>> no-one's suffered any major catastrophic loss.
>>
>> Let all your servers be upstairs and your backup tapes be even higher.
>>
>>
>>
>>   
> I have just emailed my friend in Holland to see if we can borrow the 
> little boy who stuck his finger in the dyke (have you seen the forecast
> for the weekend?).  We are high enough here to avoid the immediate 
> problems, but it has been a hellish week!

We already did -- 380 years ago -- and his name was Cornelius Vermuyden.

Charles I initially hired him in 1626 for a minor Fen drainage project
in NE Lincolnshire between Scunthorpe, Gainsborough and Goole.
Subsequently, up to 1652, he extended this to drain the whole fenland
region from West Norfolk through North Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire
up to the border with South Yorkshire. There was a hiatus in these
works when his initial funding ran out because his patrons got
distracted by civil wars and Cromwell.

On the whole, Vermuyden's foundations stood up well, though there were
inundations from time to time. The crunch came in 1947, however, when,
following a Winter of prolonged sub-zero temperatures and heavy snowfall,
in March the temperature rose and heavy rain fell for a prolonged period.
The melting snow and rainfall ran straight over the still frozen ground
into the rivers, which burst their banks and caused devasating flooding
over an enormous area.

The Powers That Be then, in their wisdom, constructed the Cut-Off Channel
(completed 1964) which runs from Suffolk to the Wash along the edge
of the Norfolk fens where they meet the higher ground of West Norfolk,
being cut to run below the rivers Lark, Little Ouse and Wissey and
emptying straight into the sea below King's Lynn. This captures the
run-off and diverts it round the fens. An essential precaution.

The irony is, that this Cut-Off Channel was part of Vermuyden's
original plan for fen drainage. He had seen it coming. It was the
political unrest of the time which prevented it from happening then.

When, back in 2000, I was contemplating my move from Manchester
to the Cambridge area and looking at properties in fenland, there
was serious flooding in September in the Severn river basin and the
Yorkshire Ouse. I worried about what might happen in fenland, and
watched the local Press on-line. The worst that happened was that
a drain in the High Street of March backed up one day, causing
some local flooding. Vermuyden's works (completed by his Cut-Off
Channel) held. There were no floods. That is water engineering as
it should be.

Subsequently there were NATO[1] commissions on what to do about the
flood defences around the Severn and in Yorkshire. I doubt much
real construction has been done since then. Nor has there been much
done about restricting building development on flood-plains areas.
Vermuyden would have had other ideas; and better.

Seeing in the media what has been happening in Yorkshire and the
surrounding areas recently has been startling and distressing.
My sympathies to anyone who has suffered.

Best wishes to all,
Ted.

[1] No Action, Talk Only

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Date: 28-Jun-07                                       Time: 11:38:59
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