I note that the Department of Environment and Agriculture has taken over the responsibility of flood protection from Pendle Borough Council. Bearing in mind that this is the agency which came under such severe criticism during the winter flooding in other parts of the country and also the proposed reduction in their staffing of 1500 jobs, a third of these directly concerned with flood protection, I am yet to be convinced that this is good news. As many of my readers will remember, I have a professional interest in such matters dating from the time when I was responsible for managing the water resource at Bancroft Shed.
We are lucky in Barlick because we are on the watershed between the Ribble and Aire basins and so we don't have to cope with water coming down from other catchment areas, all we have to worry about is the water coming down off Whitemoor to the west. In normal conditions, the moor acts as a giant sponge absorbing rainfall and gradually releasing it in a controlled flow. This is why Barlick was such an ideal location for water powered mills. We often don't realise that too much water at once was just as damaging for these as low water during drought conditions.
Our template for the danger we could face is the flood of July 1932 when a severe weather event on Whitemoor, what we call a 'cloudburst', dropped an enormous amount of water on the moor, so much that it hadn't time to soak in and ran straight off into the town. Some idea of the severity of this can be gained from the fact that it overwhelmed the culvert between Gillians and Bancroft washing the skeps and weft boxes out on the road from Wild Brothers' garage just above Bancroft dam, bursting the wall of the dam and dropping the whole lot into the beck behind what was the old tannery. From there it overwhelmed Ouzledale and as the debris choked the culvert under Clough Mill it broke through the back wall of the shed and roared straight through out into Wapping. Harold Duxbury saw it and told me that the water was over six feet deep in Butts. Of course, by that time, Gillians Beck had been joined by a similar amount of water coming down Calf Hall Beck from the same source, the moor. Once past Butts the flood did further damage downstream but nowhere near that in the town where it had by-passed the blocked culverts.
This danger has not gone away, the culverts are still there and all credit to Pendle Borough, who have done a good job of keeping trash screens clear and making sure that they were in good condition. Their local knowledge of the choke points in the system and the history of the 1932 flood was essential.
The question that is in my mind is whether the DEA have this knowledge and how high a priority Barlick would be in any adverse event on Whitemoor? I will be watching.....
The aftermath at Bancroft in July 1932.