Wheatley - Village Archive - Storm in June 1910

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Two press reports of a great storm on June 9 1910. Also report from Andrew Crane

Thursday June 9 1910. Severe deluge of rain. 4 inches of rain in an hour. 5.5 inches in 24 hours. Hailstones of exceptional size, large as marbles. Torrent 3 feet deep swept down the village street. There was a flood in the Post Office to a depth of 2.5 feet. Village isolated. House in Crown Square flooded to a depth of 6 feet. Mrs Harding escaped from top floor window. Rick (hayrick) at College Farm weighing nearly 2 tons moved.

At the western end of the village a wall was washed down and the streets transformed into river beds. A torrent some three feet deep swept through the heart of the village carrying furniture and domestic utensils of all kinds with it. The Post Office, into which the water swelled to a depth of two feet six inches, was immediately inundated and telegraphic and telephonic communication dislocated. So swift was the torrent down this street that a passage across the road was attended with serious danger and only made possible in some instances by the use of a rope. In one low-lying house in Crown Square the water reached a depth of nearly 6’, the housewife only making her escape through a bedroom window.

In the same house the furniture floated round and round for some hours and today the saddened walls and a harmonium with the keys warped and fixed show beyond dispute the havoc wrought. In the farmyard of Mr T .J. Robbins (College Farm) a rick weighing between 1½ and 2 tons was transported bodily upon the flood to the limits of the yard and numerous ducks and geese were drowned.”

Describing the thundery nature of the storm, the article continued: “The heat during the morning was very oppressive. The storm came from an eastward direction and appeared to circle the village several times. It broke with a loud crash of thunder about quarter to one in the afternoon and thereafter appalling flashes of lightning and deafening thunder succeeded each other, about every ten seconds, for about an hour and a half. One woman living in Westfield Road was struck by lightning on the shoulder, when indoors, near a window, and lost the use of one arm for several days.” No such storm had been recorded at Wheatley within living memory.

See record 994 for photo of hayrick that was moved