Thread by @AtticumFloreat

A long thread on flooding in Fishlake:

Fishlake up in Yorkshire is in the news now because it is under water. (The name, of course, says it all but the Wisdom of our Ancestors holds little sway today).

Not for the first time.

Not too far in the past the whole area downstream from York (on the Ouse) and Doncaster (on the Don) flooded most years. The land varies from about 3 to 10m above sea level so of course it did; 3m is spring high tide on the Humber.

In winter this used to be an area of marshes and water meadows. Farmers there never planted in the autumn. The Romans avoided it, taking Ermine Street, from Lincoln to York, along a big loop to the west on ground about 60 feet above the sea. These marshy areas were called Ings.

Then in the sixties we saw the birth of the River Authorites and up in Yorkshire they were very effective in stopping the spectacular annual flood downstream from York. All the villages there were like Fishlake, perched on small hillocks of higher land

on which they built a church, a pub and a close collection of houses. Within a few years, astonishingly, one began to see building out into the former floodplain. The elders in the villages looked on bemused. They would flood they said. And flood they did.

At Barlby in the late 80s, a village on the east bank of the Ouse the new half of the village woke up one morning with water downstairs. Why was this? Well, because the village was below the river level and, as had been explained, water does not flow uphill. Not even in Yorkshire

Fishlake is on the north west bank of the Don just downstream from Doncaster (Danum in Roman times, an Ermine Street bridgehead on higher land that never flooded) and lies below the high water mark on the river which is held in by levees or dikes.

The church and old pub are OK as you may have seen on the news but everyone in modern houses has water halfway up their living rooms. I have no doubt at all that the Environment Agency or its progenitor gave permission for them to be built. As they do up to this day.

The rivers in this area are tidal with a spring tidal range of about 6m. York has been a port for two millennia and Selby still built trawlers back in the day; they built the Greenpeace ‘Rainbow Warrior’, the last of a long line of noble British vessels to be sunk by the French.

And surprise surprise - the November spring tide is now.

Grrrrrrrr!