Remembering the great flood
Maidenhead: Exhbition looks back at 1947 devastation
A free exhibition to mark the 75th anniversary of the great flood of 1947 has opened this week at Maidenhead Heritage Centre.
The floods were then described in the Advertiser as ‘the greatest disaster in Maidenead’s history’. The Thames was out of its banks in Maidenhead for more than two weeks that March.
Flooding was severe enough that foreign military forces lent their assistance. Food parcels were sent from Canada and the US, among other places.
The Bath Road was underwater all the way from The Bear Hotel to near the Dumb Bell pub (Miller & Carter) in Taplow.
The heritage centre has an especially dramatic photograph of a Sherman tank carrying people to work.
The flood was worsened by other factors, including the weather and the war.
“Bear in mind, this was less than two years after the end of World War Two,” said chairman Richard Poad. “The country was still pretty much on its knees.
“There was a coal miners’ strike and a shortage of coal, and right before the flood it had snowed heavily.”
The storm came on rapidly and the rock-hard ground could not soak up the water.
It ran off and filled up the river, overflowing it.
“The river itself was nearly two miles wide,” said Richard. “Even at the end when the water went down, they brought in huge hot air pumps from the airlines at Northolt airport.
“The scale of the disaster was quite something, revealed dramatically in the photos. It makes us realise what the Jubilee River flood alleviation scheme was designed to protect us from.
“For people who lived through it, alongside the war, it was the most significant event of their lives.”
The exhibition also features the verbal accounts of those who lived through the flood, recorded for the 50th anniversary in the 1990s.
One gentleman who was 10 years old at the time remembers getting a lift home in a punt and tying it up to the bannisters on the stairs.
Researchers at the centre are inviting local residents with memories or photographs of the flooding to bring them in to share.
The exhibition in Park Street is open from Tuesdays to Saturdays and will run until the end of March.