Flooding at least every seven years when the Lavants rise
For today and tomorrow I have taken a trip out of Portsmouth to Rowlands Castle and the border road from it to the village of Finchdean. I am sure many of you have passed over the railway bridge when on your way to London.
It is believed the photograph was taken in the late 1940s. I think the delivery lorry is a Bedford but I am sure someone will tell me if I’m wrong!
On the left of the road, staging has been put up to save pedestrians getting their feet soaked.
On the right is a deep ditch which took flood water into the sur- rounding fields.
The railway embankment is clear of shrubs. This was to stop any fires from passing steam engines where hot ash could set fire to the embankments. To the left of the bridge can be seen a gradient post which tells the line is level to the right but a falling gradient to Rowlands Castle station a mile away.
In the modern scene we can see the area has overgrown considerably. The ditch on the right has recently been cleaned. The hedgerow on the left is now part of a cottage with driveway gate. The cottage is behind the camera on the left.
ON THIS DAY
Trafalgar Day 1772: Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan) was born in Ottery St Mary, Devon.
1805: Lord Nelson, English naval hero, was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar – dying at the precise moment the Franco-Spanish fleet surrendered.
1833: Alfred Nobel, industrialist, inventor of dynamite and founder of the Nobel Prizes, was born in Stockholm.
1918: The ‘Spanish flu’ epidemic started in Britain, killing approximately twice as many as died in the First World War.
1940: Geoffrey Boycott, Yorkshire and England cricketer, was born in West Yorkshire.
1950: Chinese forces occupied Tibet.
1952: The President of the Kenya African Union, Jomo Kenyatta, was arrested after the declaration of a state of emergency in the British colony of Kenya.
1966: Disaster struck the small Welsh mining village of Aberfan when a colliery slag tip slid down the side of a hill and engulfed a row of houses, a farm and a school. Of the 144 people who died, 116 were children.
1982: Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness made history by becoming the first members of Sinn Fein to be elected to the Ulster Assembly.
ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Zimbabwean authorities revealed at least 55 elephants had starved to death in the past two months in the country’s biggest national park amid a drought.
BIRTHDAYS: Lord Mandelson, former European Union trade commissioner, 67; David Campese, former Australian rugby player, 58; Jade Jagger, jewellery designer,
49; Kim Kardashian, reality TV star/ model, 40.