Everyone who lives here knows that the Levels, as they are called, were once a seabed. It’s obvious as you look down on them from the ridges and promontories where the houses are.
I remember my old grandmother telling me how more than a hundred years ago thousands drowned when seas flooded the wetlands and the water rose to a height never known before.
In winter, from December to March or April, there are often wide stretches of standing water on both sides of the London train as it heads back west.
When I was a boy there were more “withey beds”, as they were called, where “whips“ or willow rods were grown. But now your laundry basket probably comes from B&Q.
In the swampy, marshland sections you could still hear the shuddering call of the snipe.
The pastures dry quickly and and cows are let out in April. By the summer you can walk or cycle the “droves“ along which the cows are led to their summer pastures.
Instead of fences or hedges the fields have “rhynes” where swans nest. Cows fall into the rhynes and have to be hauled out with ropes sometimes.
This year, for the second time in a decade, the waters are much higher than usual. Roads have had to be closed and a few villages have been completely abandoned. Rescue boats have been needed to help people from the upper floors of houses.
The floods are a national “story” now.
Most local people blame the silting of the rivers and the politicians for neglecting to dredge them. It seems intuitively obvious – clear the rivers and the water will run off more easily.
But there are problems with this. These are slow meandering rivers. Over the centuries they have been banked and diverted so that sometimes the river levels are higher than the surrounding wetland. In a few places there are people living below the level of the river wall.
And the rivers are tidal.
Major dredging to widen or deepen the channels to increase the flow of water would destabilise the complex of bridges, river walls and sluices that control the water in normal years.
A dispute has broken out between the environment minister and the head of the environment agency that manages the countryside. David Cameron has come down here to “bang a few heads together”.
“My focus is on the operational priorities …”, he says.
Massive pumps have been brought in from the Netherlands to move standing water to rivers with more capacity.
It is a terrible thing to find your home flooded with foul water. The insurance companies take a long time to authorise the repairs and we know someone whose insurance claim was voided because they had not declared the rhyne that ran past the bottom of their garden.
They were lucky though. A local builder, with the help of neighbours, fixed the house for them.