Two floods in 3 years ...now our £900,000 home is worthless
A FAMILY’S dream home is now “worthless” after it was flooded with raw sewage – for a second time.
Helen and Ashley Northway’s 17th-century £900,000 stone farmhouse was overflowing with foul water following heavy rain last week, which has left the family feeling ill.
It is the second time in three years the property has been hit.
The six-bed property was overwhelmed despite £230,000 spent on flood defences and drain upgrades in their village in 2021.
The home sits in a natural dip in the centre of Raunds, Northants.
On Christmas Eve 2020, the family desperately tried to save presents and valuables after the entire ground floor of their home was under three feet of water.
They complained to Northamptonshire Highways and engineers repaired misconnected sewage pipes and built two soakaways to absorb surface water. But just over two years later, it has flooded again.
And after being exposed to raw sewage, the couple, 10-month-old daughter Evelyn, disabled son Archie, 10, and Helen’s grandmother June, 89, all fell ill.
Recruitment manager Helen, 42, said: “We are all very sick.All five members of my household had to be assessed by an emergency doctor and prescribed antibiotics for chest infections, after exposure to raw sewage, and thereafter chemicals to treat it.
“My husband has been coughing up blood. With vulnerable people including my grandmother and baby being affected, I am not willing to allow this to drag on.
“There is serious risk to health, let alone the property damage.”
Helen and Ashley, 43, a bomb disposal expert with the Royal Engineers, bought the house in 2017.
They spent £200,000 converting the 380-yearold building into a family home including an annexe for Helen’s grandmother.
The couple hoped the property would be an investment for their children when they got older. However, they say it is now “worthless” and are unable to sell or insure it against future floods.
Helen said: “Before we bought the house, there had been two floods in 100 years but since we moved in, there have been two in three years. Every time it rains, we know we are at serious risk of being flooded out. We have had to cancel holidays, attending funerals, even our honeymoon was cut short so we could come back and pump out water.
“What we have now is a nigh-on £1million house which we were hoping to leave to our children but is now a massive life-long problem.”
Helen also blames a 400-home development at the end of her road for increasing pressure on the drains. She said: “The drains here can’t cope already and now we’ve got 400 houses adding to that pressure. During the latest floods, my grandmother was so distressed she was crying. It’s horrific. There’s a threat to human health, mental and physical.”
Ashley, who now works in a secondary school, said: “I’ve served all over the world but I only have nightmares about the floods.”
The family are in contact with their MP Tom Pursglove, who said: “Any new development must take flooding risk fully into account and any mitigation schemes must be sufficiently robust to address it.”
North Northants Council said: “Investigations are ongoing due to the cause of flooding to the property.”