The great floods of 1953

January 31 is a date that will forever remain prominent in the minds of older Great Yarmouthians and east Norfolk coastal residents.

Every year, when the calendar turns, their thoughts inevitably think back to that fateful Saturday night in 1953 when devastating floods surged in to cause death, damage and danger.

 

Overall 307 men, women and children lost their lives, ten of them in the Yarmouth region.

It has since been argued that many of those who died might not have done so had there been a co-ordinated warning system alerting authorities along the affected east and south-east coast so people could have evacuated their homes and fled to safe ground out of the reach of the flood level.

But for the self-sacrifice, courage and dedication of others who became rescuers in the gale-whipped surging waters, that death toll could have been far greater.

Yarmouth was not unused to flooding - in 1905, for example, the highest tide ever recorded here caused the river to overflow low quay headings and inundate areas like Southtown and Cobholm - but 1953 was “the worst in living memory,” according to reports in the Mercury.

The newspaper said the disaster resulted from “a grim combination of high tides and northerly gales that forced the sea inland at low spots all along the coast.” It continued:

At Yarmouth the situation was considerably worsened by the bursting of the banks of Breydon Water at several points which left flood water several feet deep in Southtown and Cobholm long after it had subsided in other parts of the town.

The speed at which the sea and river swept into the town gave no warning of the imminent disaster, and in the low-lying riverside districts householders had little opportunity to save any of their possessions before they were forced to seek refuge in upstair rooms.

It is estimated that 3500 houses have been flooded and many thousands of people have been evacuated from the affected areas, particularly from the Lichfield, Wolseley and Stafford Roads area of Southtown and throughout Cobholm where the muddy waters of Breydon transformed roads and streets into swirling rivers.

There has been considerable loss of livestock on marshes and allotments at the west of the town, and on the sea front damage has been extensive.

Within a very short time of the magnitude of the invasion being realised, every official department in the borough swung into action and, aided by remarkable spontaneous co-operation from firms and individuals, tackled the immense task of rescuing and bringing relief to the victims and dealing with the urgent work of repair and restoration.

 

Rest centres were quickly opened, appeals for clothing launched, and all available small craft brought up to join those vehicles capable of going through the flood water in the work of rescue. Schools and holiday camps were used to house the homeless, and an emergency meals service was instituted.

On Wednesday a fleet of fire brigade pumps from the Midlands arrived to join the Army (Regular and Territorial), Royal Air Force and other workers in the Southtown and Cobholm districts which, by this time, remained the focal point of relief and emergency repair activity.

Nine residents, most of them elderly, died and the body of a tenth was not recovered by the time inquests on the others opened four days after the surge.

At the inquest the Chief Constable, Charles Jelliff, said no official warning of the floods was received from any authority, the abnormal rise in the water level locally being spotted by Insp J W Farrell and a constable about 8.30pm.

Police followed their usual practice of sending a loudspeaker car to danger points at the south end of town, he said.

Within 15 minutes the sea had broken over the sea wall and penetrated Marine Parade.

The river rose with equal rapidity and flooded some parts of Gorleston and Yarmouth and the whole of Southtown and Cobholm. The water reached the Southtown approach to the Haven Bridge very early, preventing all transport between Yarmouth and Gorleston, other than by boat.

Warnings were flashed on to screens in busy cinemas to enable audiences to try to reach their homes. Some dancers were marooned in Gorleston Floral Hall, but some managed to reach a cliff slope to the Cliff Hotel still dry-footed…and continued dancing there! Others who caught a Yarmouth-bound bus from the ballroom were stranded when the vehicle could not get beyond the Half Way House, and 150 sheltered overnight at the Hall Mackenzie dance school in High Road.

Also marooned were customers of the Belle Vue public house on Brush Quay. At the King William IV public house on the same road, water gushed in when a customer opened the door and flooded the place to waist level, cascading downstairs to fill living rooms to a depth of 6ft.

 

Similar experiences, some harrowing, others bizarre, befell people in affected parts of the borough. Exmouth Road resident Cliff Meadows said: “A land mine and a dozen bombs dropped near us during the war didn’t do as much damage to us as the water did in half an hour.”

Apart from householders, businesses suffered too, losing stock, essential equipment and vital paperwork. A laundry was awash with oily water. A foundry’s moulds were destroyed.

Firemen reckoned they had pumped away 35 million gallons of flood water from the borough. Despite that, much remained to drain away.

Apart from major tasks like plugging gaps in the Breydon Wall to avert further problems, restoring essential services, generally cleaning up, and trying to dry out and repair homes, Yarmouth set about trying to regain some sort of normality.

Also, it took steps vigorously to deny national rumours that it had been “knocked out” as a holiday resort because accommodation and amenities had been damaged too badly.

But it took a long time to rid Yarmouth of most of the evidence of the floods. Some homes had a saltwater tideline on their walls for years afterwards, showing the height the floods reached.

Almost half a-century earlier, in 1905, the floodwaters brought tragedy.
Cobholm was again one of the worst hit places, and in one cottage a dead child lay on a table surrounded by water - and upstairs there was a sick child; there was no fire nor means of kindling one.

Ten children were found in another cottage, without a father because he was in hospital. Again there was no fire, nor was there any food in the house which was wet, filthy and squalid.