The Calder Valley floods...

After the notorious Boxing Day floods in the Calder Valley when lots of properties including our workshop were wrecked by the huge volume of water that came down the valley we were interested to see how our new flood gate would cope. Although we hoped that this area would never flood again we also sneakily wanted the flood gate to be kind of … tested. We had a temporary barrier in place before but it had been completely overwhelmed. This new one came all the way from Germany and took quite a bit of installing. It looks solid and is a thing of beauty.

Although the flooding that took place over the weekend was minimal compared to the previous deluge, the river Calder burst its banks in many places. We had arranged for our gate to be closed but we were turned back by the police so could not check. I was still a tad worried - anything could happen, the gate might not work, it might spring a leak, it could mysteriously swing open, etc. The river was very high and racing unbelievably fast down the valley.

The following morning we drove to the workshop and discovered that the flood gate had done its job admirably and Nanholme Mill was bone dry. There was a bit of water left by the gate which dispersed across the yard but it was barely noticeable. It made us realise just how much water must have collected in the mill the last time and grateful that we received crowdfunding and a grant to help us recover and install new flood protection.