Frozen river, 25 Dec 2010

In recent days and weeks I’ve been looking through a lot of photos for some calendars I’m making, and have been reminded of the remarkable and rare sight of a frozen River Ouse, on this day, Christmas Day, in 2010.

It doesn’t feel like it was a whole nine years ago, but apparently it was.

I wrote about it at the time, and included some photos, quite small.

As I’m writing two pages today (partly to make up for not adding anything yesterday in my so-called ‘December Daily‘), I’m not going to add any more words to this page — please revisit the 2010 page for the contemporary account of The Days the Ouse Froze Over — but a couple of photos follow as a reminder of that very harsh winter weather at this time in 2010.

Geese on frozen Ouse, 25 Dec 2010

Frozen Ouse, Clifton, 25 Dec 2010

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York Minster across flooded Ouse, from Water End, 27 Dec 2015

I went for a short wander yesterday, Sunday, going back to the Ouse to see how the ings lands were looking after the floods. The photo above was taken on Sunday 27 Dec, and featured on an earlier page. The photo below was taken from the same place on Sunday 10 January, two weeks later.

York Minster across flooded Ouse, from Water End, 10 Jan 2016

As we can see, the waters have retreated here on the Leeman Road side, enough for people to be out walking their dogs in what looked like a lake two weeks ago. The Ouse though is still beyond its usual banks. In normal conditions the strip of dry land pictured below has the Ouse to the left of it, rather than to the left and the right.

Ouse on left, floods on right, from Clifton Bridge, 10 Jan 2016

If we cross the road at Water End and look out across the ings and the Ouse the other way (looking out of town, upstream) there’s still a lot of floodwater. It doesn’t seem to have dropped much, over the course of a fortnight.

In the photo below, the green strip across the middle of the photo is the floodbank created to hold in water from the overflowing Ouse, to reduce the levels downstream, as discussed on a page some years ago. On 27 December, standing here on Water End, I could barely see the floodbank, which appeared to have so much water behind it that some of it looked to be spilling back over. So the level has dropped a bit, but not much. Not as much as I expected it might have, after a fortnight.

The white dots on the water are gulls. They often congregate on these watery ings lands, in times of flood.

Clifton riverside and ings, from Water End, 10 Jan 2016

I wanted to have a bit of walk, having been ill and indoors too much recently. I was hoping it might be possible to access the riverside pathways, down by Clifton Bridge. It hadn’t been possible on 27 December, as the bottom of the slope leading to those paths looked like this (taken from up on the bridge, looking down):

Floodwater on riverside paths near Clifton Bridge, 27 Dec 2015

On 10 Jan, two weeks on, I was able to walk down and stand where those floodwaters had been. Looking at the riverside path towards town, it was clear that levels hadn’t dropped dramatically enough for me to take a stroll that way.

It’s retreating, but not much. Floodwater on riverside paths by Clifton Bridge, 10 Jan 2016

Water under the bridge … as is usually the case when the river’s high, but thankfully the gate on the higher part was open. Hurrah, let’s see how far we can get along the riverside path.

Under Clifton Bridge: nice to see that gate open in the dry part

All bright in the late afternoon sun, muted winter colours, dry path leading onwards, all looking good …

Looking good …

… but not for long. Seconds later, the dry path becomes another watery place. River to the left, and river on the path. How disappointing. I guess I’ll have to turn back.

… Looking wet …

I didn’t turn back though, as an alternative route suggested itself.

I’ve walked and cycled along here many times over the years. To the right of the tarmac path there are trees and a tangle of ivy and other vegetation, and land rising up away from the river. It’s just a thin strip of land, left to go wild.

Through the carpet of ivy on this bank there are a few narrow muddy tracks leading upwards away from the river. I’ve been vaguely curious about them, but never curious enough to climb up there. This afternoon, with floodwater preventing further progress on the normal path, I thought I would.

Time to venture up the track up the bank, through the ivy

Clambering up the slope into the ivy and trees I walked along this higher level path, littered with the usual rubbish, all unkempt, but clearly fairly well-used, the litter suggested.

Then I noticed this rusty old thing.

Rusty relic by the track

Bent and collapsing, it was still recognisable as a railing, a simple guard rail, on the outside of the path where the land dropped down to the lower path and the river beyond. Apparently used a long time ago, in an age before littering pleasant places with empty lager cans became common practice.

The path went on for only a short stretch, behind the playground of the Homestead Park, visible through a wire fence, then dropped down again, back to the floods. No further progress possible. I just stood there a while and looked out across the watery expanse, towards Holgate and Acomb, the water tower just visible in the distance through the winter trees.

View across floodwaters of the Ouse, 3.20pm, 10 Jan 2016

Then headed back. Passing another rusty remnant of guard rail, forgotten and redundant in the ivy and shrubbery, under trees mature enough perhaps to have been there when this path was well-used enough to need a guard rail, before the lower level tarmac path took over as the preferred route.

Another rusty old relic

Descending to the tarmac path I met a man and his son out for a bike ride, heading out of town, as I’d tried to. He asked if they could get through ahead. I looked doubtful and said I didn’t think so, that I hadn’t been able to, they might be able to on bikes. The son urged his dad to have a go. I sounded like a nannying fussbucket perhaps, cautioning against endangering themselves, though said with a laugh. The man said, as they cycled off, ‘it’s only a bit of water’. They soon reappeared, presumably realising that it was more than a bit of water, and really quite a lot of water. I was still standing on the path, looking up at what would have been the course of that higher-level walkway, trying to imagine how it worked, where it started, before the massive concrete structure we know as Clifton Bridge appeared here, cutting through the old landscape, bridging the river, in the 1960s.

When I got home, I looked for images I remember seeing before, of Water End on the Clifton side, before the bridge was built. Here’s one, from around 100 years ago.

Before the bridge: looking down towards the Ouse from Water End in Clifton (Photo: Explore York Libraries and Archives

If we were standing in the same place now we’d have Clifton Bridge stretching out before us. The slope down to the river is still there, to the left of Clifton Bridge. To the left of that, the tall brick wall is still there, as pictured on photos above. The slope here used to lead to the ferry, taking people across the river to the Leeman Road side.

On the right of the photo, a pathway bends round to the right, with a plain iron guardrail, two horizontal bars between uprights. Leading to what must have been a very pleasant riverside promenade high up and still accessible in times of flood. Rusty remnants of its railings still there in the trees.

Many years ago I did some family history research and found that ancestors on my dad’s side lived here in Clifton at the turn of the 19th century, in housing that was cleared to make Clifton Dale, then in Abbey Street. One of my great-grandmothers lived there for decades, into her 90s. I didn’t know that when I moved to the Clifton area 25 years ago, but I’ve always felt at home here, and have since wondered if that has something to do with it.

When I saw the rusted redundant railing on a forgotten walkway above the Ouse I thought about how you can live in a place for so long and still have new things to find, when forced from the usual ways and the beaten track. And thought about all the people back then walking this way, how our tracks through the ivy still lead to the old way, where they walked. Only though when sitting down to write this did I think about my own family history and the Welbys in Clifton, and how they might have walked along here when the railings weren’t rusting and the ferry took people over the river.

So many layers. And that’s why I keep writing these York Stories, even though it makes no money and sometimes feels like a waste of time and effort. Sometimes it flows, just like the river, and it seems best to go with it, when it does.

Lisa

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Yorkshire Evening Press, 30 Dec 1978: SIEGE OF YORK reports on severe floods

The recent floods have been said to be ‘the worst since 1982′, because of the Foss barrier failure. The severe floods of 1982 followed severe floods of only four years earlier. This old Yorkshire Evening Press I have (discussed on a page a few years back, and pictured above) reports on the floods of December 1978, before any of the defences we’re now familiar with were constructed. The Leeman Road area suffered badly.

The caption reads: ‘Just like a canal … A bird’s eye view of Salisbury Terrace (foreground) and Salisbury Road, leading to the junction with Landing Lane and Water End, York. In the background are the swollen River Ouse and Clifton Ings. Many families are living upstairs in the snow-capped homes, without electricity or gas.’

Looking surprisingly cheery in the circumstances, these men in a boat on the temporary river of Salisbury Road (with Water End junction in the background):

I mentioned on the previous page an interesting study from the early 1990s: Public perception of rivers and flood defence (345/2/T) : flooding and flood defences in York by S M Tapsell, S M Tunstall and M Fordham.

It reminds us, at a time when perhaps we need reminding, of the work that has been done to protect so many homes previously vulnerable to major floods.

Of the Leeman Road area defences it says:

According to the NRA, it was the 1978 flood which initiated this scheme as 225 houses in the area had been flooded. This had been the worst flooding since 1947 when 332 houses had been flooded.

… Some local residents were being flooded every year or two.

The study seemed to confirm something I’d heard before, that soil from the nearby sugarbeet factory was used to construct the original floodbanks, which were completed in 1980. It also includes this interesting snippet of information:

the Local Authority wanted to be able to mow the grass at the top of the banks. This involved flattening the top of the banks (standard floodbanks a crescent shape) which slightly increased the cost of the scheme.

It also reported problems with ‘mole infestations’ in the floodbanks.

Further work was needed after the 1982 flood because of seepage. Other work was scheduled to take place in 1992. The defences in this area seem to have had several modifications and improvements, and more work has taken place very recently, with newly formed floodbanks taking shape in the last couple of years. Available information suggests that residents in this area have had to campaign for a long time for adequate, improved defences, as the original floodbanks weren’t high enough.

The authors of this study into perceptions of the defences mention the belief among some residents ‘that the Leeman Road scheme deflects the current of the Ouse and makes flooding worse in other areas of York.’ This could of course be said of all flood defences, and often is, in a phrase I’ve heard a lot recently: ‘one man’s flood defence is another man’s flood.’ All this floodwater we’re wanting to get out of York goes through a few other places downstream, doesn’t it. Which is why it’s probably better, as many have suggested, to have better management further upstream. Perhaps that will come, one day.

For now, it seems the improved Leeman Road and Water End defences have done their job, been a success. Perhaps anyone who knows differently can add a comment, but they looked to be doing well when I had a wander along there on 27 December. This success — and the success of other 1980s and early 1990s defences — has, understandably, been overshadowed by the failure of the Foss barrier. Which caused the same kind of havoc and misery as the residents of the Leeman Road area used to suffer.

It’s clear, looking at that old yellowing (broadsheet sized) Yorkshire Evening Press of 1978, how many changes there have been, in York and everywhere, since the late 1970s and early 80s. Perhaps best summed up by quoting again from Public perception of rivers and flood defence (345/2/T) : flooding and flood defences in York, reporting on what consultation had taken place on the plans for the Leeman Road defences, back then, as remembered by a Mr Wilson:

… public consultation was carried out through the local working man’s club and the vicar of a local church. He thought that there had probably been a newsletter circulated … Mr Wilson said that he did not remember any objections to the scheme and, in fact, the local milkman had told his wife that he should be given a medal for what the Authority did regarding the flood.

Leeman Road area, flood defences, 27 Dec 2015

Further information

Leeman Road Flood Defence Scheme Worries (2008)

Flood defences given extra £1m to protect hundreds of homes (2013)

York’s leaders praise flood defence project (2014)

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Clifton Green, 27 Dec 2015

The internet is full of photos of the recent floods in York. Why would I want to add more? Partly to illustrate the fact that large areas of York aren’t flooded. The media coverage can often give a misleading impression. According to the Mirror, York is ‘almost completely underwater’ and the ‘ancient city was swallowed up by flood water’, according to the Mail. I thought I’d better go and have a look. If I could get into the city centre at all …

Here’s a selection of photos taken on a walk in York on the afternoon of Sunday 27 December, from the Clifton area to the city centre. Following the Ouse.

On Water End/Clifton Bridge, a mass of water to the left covering what is normally a grassed area next to the Ouse, as it heads into the city centre. The floodbank was only just visible, over on the far side of the river, and the water that the ings area is supposed to hold behind that floodbank seemed to be starting to spill over, back towards the Ouse. To the right, the road crossing Clifton Bridge. Which, as is clear in this photo, was one of the many roads in York which wasn’t flooded.

On the other side of the road, the recently improved earth bank defences protecting the Leeman Road area (off to the right) seemed to be working well.

Across a massively widened Ouse, the Minster looking handsome in the winter sunlight, in the distance. Some news reports later that day seemed to be suggesting that roads around the Minster were flooded. It may look all watery from this far away, but of course roads around the Minster weren’t flooded.

Walking towards the city centre, I wanted to check the situation by the next bridge, where I remember standing as the floodwaters of the 2012 floods passed by. Here, at Scarborough Bridge, it looked similar to how it looked in 2012.

Holding the camera over the barrier perhaps gives a better impression of the situation. Looking towards the city centre, towards Lendal Bridge. There’s normally a riverside walkway in the middle area of this photo, with the Ouse behind the line of that tree on the right. The wall on the left is part of the flood barrier here and has floodgates in it. As this photo shows, the level of the water was some way off the top of the defences in this area, at this point on Sunday afternoon (2.25pm).

Looking back the other way, back towards Scarborough Bridge, and again showing the flood defences here, sturdy walls with gates protecting these riverside properties.

The Ouse had also oozed into the lower parts of the Museum Gardens, as it usually does when there’s a flood, and as it has been doing for centuries, before the Museum Gardens were the Museum Gardens. A recent addition, the Star Inn the City building, to the left of this photo, seems to have been constructed to cope with this, and appeared to be still accessible.

Outside the Museum Gardens, on the old slope down to the river between Lendal Tower and Lendal Bridge. The height of the Ouse became clearer here. It was very high. I was looking for a particular detail which might help get some idea of how this compares with previous floods …

But on the way back up that slope, just a quick reminder that most of York isn’t flooded, and is full of shoppers and traffic, as normal. Or at least it was on the afternoon of 27 December. Since then the authorities have sent out announcements telling people not to come into the city.

Onto Museum Street, looking down to where we were standing a minute ago, that slope down to the river. As I’ve mentioned before, there’s a post here with flood levels recorded on it. It’s visible from up on the approach to Lendal Bridge, looking down. The 1892 level marker is below the water level, which is now just below a scratched inscription reading ‘1982’. More on that story later …

On Lendal Bridge, the other side of it, looking over towards where the river water moves through the city towards Ouse Bridge. The arches of Ouse Bridge are much photographed in times of flood, as a visual indicator of how much the river level has risen, but many eyes were also on these flood-defending walls in the North Street area, which, like the ones we looked at earlier, are the late-20th century attempts to hold back the water. Still doing so, on a Sunday afternoon in late December 2015, with the river not at the top of them.

Leaving Lendal Bridge, heading back along Museum Street (not flooded), Davygate (not flooded), St Helen’s Square (not flooded), into Stonegate, also not flooded, and busy with shoppers, just as normal.

Round the corner, quiet, but also not flooded.

And into the Swinegate area, also quiet, but also not flooded.

The walk then continued through many of York’s other not flooded streets, including Petergate, King’s Square, St Andrewgate, Goodramgate, and Aldwark.

Parliament Street and Coney Street and all the streets linking them were no doubt also busy with shoppers, as those streets wouldn’t have been flooded either. Most of York’s city centre doesn’t flood, and remains accessible, but you wouldn’t know that from the media coverage.

For those affected, it’s horrendous, and no one would wish to play that down. And the emergency services, local authority, local councillors, volunteers, neighbours, have been working all hours trying to help affected residents deal with the impact. An impact which has been massive over on the other side of town, near the Foss.

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On Christmas Eve the Ouse began to ooze across the riverside paths, spilling out beyond its usual banks. This is of course a regular occurrence, though it seems a while since it happened. Maybe I wasn’t paying proper attention. I am now aware and up to date on what the Ouse is doing, thanks to a particular Twitter account.

@RiverOuseYork sends out regular tweets on the level of the Ouse, taking its data from the poetically-named ‘Viking Recorder’. The information from the Viking Recorder is also available from the Environment Agency in this longer format, presented in different ways. But there’s something particularly charming and satisfying about the @RiverOuseYork format.

Firstly, I’m impressed that someone thought of setting this up to feed into Twitter. Secondly, I like the way it isn’t just the data, but has an accompanying note. For most of the time I’ve been getting these tweets the river has been at normal levels, and so the tweets look like this:

Something nicely reassuring and soothing in that regularly repeated ‘Everything’s okay :)’, I thought. Everything really wasn’t okay, and I don’t know why anyone should find an automated announcement like that reassuring, but, dear readers, I did.

Yes, I know, I maybe need to get out more. And when I do, I often grab old bikey and head off madly pedalling towards Clifton ings. And if you’re pedalling to the ings you really need to know what the river is doing, and whether the riverside paths are underwater. I went up there yesterday, and thanks to @RiverOuseYork was aware before I got there that progress may be impeded. It would have been too deep to walk through without wellies, but it was shallow enough to cycle through.

The River Ouse has been doing its usual seasonal thing, rising and falling more this month, with those bits of spillage onto the paths. But as the Environment Agency information reminds us, it’s nothing like the dramatic floods of 2012 and other years. The Viking Recorder has been recording since March 1996. The highest river level it recorded was 5.40 metres (the floods of 2000). It recorded a river level of 5.07 metres on 27 September 2012. I recorded that September’s rising river in a more impressionistic fashion, with my camera, on these pages.

A bit before my time were the floods of 1892, recorded on a gatepost near Lendal Bridge. The gatepost marker also records one of the more recent major floods, during which buses had to use the private (BR-owned) road off Station Rise.

The floods of 1978 were similarly dramatic: the Siege of York.

The longer I’ve lived here in Clifton the more notice I take of the river, that ‘strong brown god‘. So fluid and natural and magical are its movements, if you’re merely walking and watching. That fluidity captured in hard data sent out automatically on Twitter is a splendid melding together. Something as old as the hills, its moods and movements conveyed through 21st century technology.

The levels dropped through the course of Christmas Day, having been at 3.17m at 3pm on Christmas Eve, just before I took the photos above:

More

I wondered where exactly the Viking Recorder is located. @YorkPrepared on Twitter knows:

And thanks to Keith who alerted me to another account using the Viking Recorder data:

On this site there are many pages to peruse about the Ouse and its doings.

And if you’re heading out up that riverside cycle path up Clifton way, you might like one of these. Route 65 through the ings and the meadows also offers the chance of ‘Finding Asylum’ (Route 5) and also reaching out further and ‘Racing Trains’ (Route 8).

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Carved in stone, near Lendal Tower

As the Ouse is rising again, it’s a good time to mention this local detail, noticed recently on the gatepost of one of the houses next to Lendal Tower, where the lane descends from Museum Street to the river, alongside Lendal Bridge. Another detail I’ve walked past hundreds of times and not noticed. Carved into the stone: ‘H.W Oct. 16 1892′ with a line underneath.

If I was passing by, a visitor to the city, I might think that someone called Hugh Williams or Hugo Watkins had just fancied inscribing his name in a gatepost. But if we have local knowledge and awareness of our city’s history the meaning of this is immediately obvious. It’s a marker of the ‘great flood’ of 1892. ‘H.W’ must be ‘high water’.

‘From the 14th to the 16th a storm of considerable strength was apparently central south of the British Isles. The rains of this period were very heavy in the eastern counties of England. In York, the greatest flood in 60 years occurred along the River Ouse; upwards of 500 houses were damaged.’

– Monthly Weather Review, October 1892

The carving into this stone is neat and professional-looking. Interesting enough in itself, but above it, on the same post, a later addition:

Carved record of levels of 1892 and 1982 floods, near Lendal Tower

More roughly inscribed, in a more amateurish fashion, with only ‘1982’, but if we get the inscription below we understand this one too. It’s recording another ‘great flood’, 90 years later. The one where the buses couldn’t get through Rougier Street and the private road near West Offices was temporarily opened to traffic.

There are stories behind both these inscriptions, no doubt. But I don’t know them. 1982 is recent enough, so if anyone reading does know more, please add a comment.

There were other major ‘flood events’ between 1892 and 1982, not added to the post. Was it perhaps the similarity in the numbers, the same digits in a different order, that made someone want to carve a record of the flood on the gatepost?

Googling led me to a page mentioning the ‘Lendal Bridge gauge’. In 1892 I’m not sure how sophisticated it would have been. Is this gatepost the ‘Lendal Bridge gauge’? Or perhaps they measured it from the watermark left on Lendal Tower a little further down. Or perhaps (likely) I’m doing them a disservice, and actually they had a sophisticated way of measuring.

Last autumn I remember watching from Lendal Bridge, above these houses, as the residents carried their valuables from the property, as the river did the thing it has always done, from time to time, expanding beyond where we’d like it to be. No one carved the 2012 level on the post. We have technology now to record these things. But not quite the same, is it.

The 1892 flood seems to have been the first to have been captured on camera. The city archives have a handful of images, including this rather special one:

1892, North Street, York: residents gather to watch the floodwaters rising. (© City of York Council)

So many changes since 1892, but this could be us, last autumn. Not on North Street – now defended from floods – but on Skeldergate, a little further along. We all gathered at the edge of the water, watching.

The river has risen again today. It’s been a while since the last ‘flooding event’, but I noticed last night, walking by the river, that those waters from the higher ground had reached us, that we had a bigger and wider river than usual.

Flood warnings were issued today. Let’s hope that all that extra river passes through without causing too many problems this time.

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