The power of the Mersey

I posted this very tranquil scene of the Mersey at Red Bank Farm a few days ago and you would be forgiven for thinking that the river was a quiet and benign bit of water.
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2012/02/unfamiliar-picture-red-bank-circa-1910.html

But anyone who has walked the banks of the river after a few days of heavy rain will no differently.

Our village and the isolated farms near the Mersey were all built beyond the flood plain. Even so this was not always sufficient protection. The Mersey has on countless occasions risen and breached these towering banks sometimes even sweeping away the defences themselves.

It was for this reason that the weir was built. Just beyond the point where the Brook joins the Mersey and at a bend in the river the weir was built to divert flood water from the Mersey down channels harmlessly out to Stretford and the Kicketty Brook.

Not that it always worked. Soon after it had been built flood water swept it away and during the nineteenth century neither the weir nor the heighted river banks prevented the Mersey bursting out across the plain. In July 1828 the Mersey flood water transported hay ricks from the farm behind Barlow Hall down to Stretford only later to bring them back, while later floods proved to be even more destructive.

It was, wrote Thomas Ellwood the local historian
“no uncommon thing to see the great level of green fields completely covered with water presenting the appearance of a large lake , several miles in circuit.”

On a cold bleak and rain swept morning it was possible to sense the importance of the weir. Stretching out from the wall was a deep and placid pool of water home to ducks and broken by bunches of water plants. But with just a little imagination how different it might have been on a stormy night when the river swollen with rain water burst over the weir.

A friend has talked about his own scary moment earlier in the year when after what seemed to be weeks of rain the river rose and topped the protective banks, leaving him scrabbling for safety.

And indeed these historic floods were quite sudden. One such event left a farmer just enough time to release his horses from the cart and stamped them to higher ground, while on another occasion one man was forced to take refuge in a birch tree till the following morning.

Pictures; The Mersey at Red Bank & the wier 1915 from the Lloyd collection, Higginbotham’s flooded field 1946 from a painting by J Montgomery 1963, m80092, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council