Trunk Drainage. 
5 
flowed, and a ^xaxt number of liouses inundated, tlic inhabitants 
escjipinji^ througli the win(U)ws and roofs. The water carried 
before it bridges, culverts, hay-ricks, and everything which stood 
in its way. 
The expanded inundations of the broad-flowing Severn, which 
every winter, and occasionally in summer, form a striking spec- 
tiicle from the summit of the Wrekin or the Malverns, cover a 
very great tract of its new-red-sandstone valley, and its tributary 
streams commit a more ruthless order of depredations between 
their spring and junction. The worst floodings in 1848 were 
tliose of the Severn, the Wye, and Warwickshire Avon ; the 
chief places being at Hereford, Pershore, Evesham, and Strat- 
ford. In February, 1852, the Severn and AVye rose with unusual 
rapidity to an alarming height ; the former river, at Gloucester 
and Tewkesbury, rising in one hour 18 inches upon the 
meadows. The lower part of the city of Hereford was so flooded 
by the Wye that the inhabitants were driven to their upper rooms, 
and ferry-boats were established in the streets. In September 
of the same year the counties of Worcester, Gloucester, and 
Hereford were visited by a tremendous tempest, in consequence 
of which the Severn rose at Worcester in one night from its low 
summer level, so that its banks were overflowed and its surface 
covered with uprooted trees and crops, furniture, and drowned 
animals. In the valley of the Teme, which river came down 
with a " head " similar to the tidal phenomenon on the Severn, 
the number of sheep washed away in the parish of Powick alone 
was 2000, and some carcasses of the cattle were drifted into 
the Bristol Channel. Great damage Avas done to the grain 
and meal in the various mills. At Henwick mill a rick of hay 
of about 12 tons was bodily moved by the flood. The hop-yards, 
which abound in the Teme valley, suffered greatly ; at one hop- 
yard, near Shelsley, poles and hops were washed into the stream ; 
several houses, and many gardens and roadways were destroyed ; 
and at Stonebridge tlTe Leigh brook, rising 20 feet above its 
ordinary level, demolished a house, drowning its inmate, and 
scattering it in fragments over the neighbourhood. The river 
Froome overflowed its banks at many points, and numerous 
smaller streams, accumulating into rivers, broke their embank- 
ments, flooding hundreds of acres; and the Hereford and Glou- 
cester mail, together with one of the passengers, was lost in the 
Froome, near Dormington. All the Vale of G/oz/ccsfer, comprising 
a vast flat district on each side of the Severn, was one wide- 
spreading sea, the water covering the fences, leaving only the 
tops of the trees visible. The parishes of Sandhurst, Longney, 
Elmore, and other villages near the river, were completely de- 
serted, the inhabitants having fled to more elevated country. 
