Flooding

I have pages looking at the main watercourses in Lower Edmonton. They can often be overlooked but sometimes they can remind you of their presence.

During October 2000 there was a spell of unusually heavy rain which led to Salmon's Brook running high and one night it overflowed its banks in the area approaching Montagu Road. With the brook running so high Saddlers Mill Stream was unable to fully discharge into it where they meet in a culvert under Montagu Road which resulted in added problems as surface drainage effectively went into reverse. This resulted in severe flooding in the area. This made the local press at the time though I didn't realise quite how bad it had been until Lesley Anderson of the Montagu Road Flood Action Group sent me a selection of photos, some of which I have reproduced here.

Given the above you might like to be aware of the Environment Agency's flood warning status for Salmon's Brook.

Flooding is not a new problem to Edmonton though I cannot recall anything quite so severe for a very long time. Upper Edmonton had problems around the railway bridge by Silver Street station where the road dips down and where a lesser known channel of Salmon's Brook (now an overflow channel with the flow diverted downstream) met Pymmes Brook near Montagu Road there was flooding across and on both sides of the North Circular.

In Lower Edmonton a degree of flooding seems to have been a pretty run of the mill occurrence in the past with the wooden road blocks that floated to the surface tending to go missing to be used as domestic fuel (above left). A particular problem area was that once known as Saddlers Mill Bridge (above right) — the area of the Hertford Road around the Bury Street, Croyland Road and Bounces Road junctions. Here the Saddlers Mill Stream passes under the road in a culvert and was unable to cope. In the 1960s a relief channel was dug upstream to divert some of the flow via the Boundary Ditch and this cured the problem.