August 1888
Major flooding in Chelmsford.
In August 1888 there was extensive flooding in Chelmsford. Back then, long before the flood alleviation scheme of the 1960s, the centre of Chelmsford used to flood fairly regularly. They didn't call it "Chelmer's ford" for nothing. The ford was presumably on the northern branch of the River Chelmer somewhere, although at the time of writing I couldn't tell you where.
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Video
Somehow I think we'd be lucky to find video of this one.
Photographs
Remarkably there are photographs of the 1888 flood, which we're able to bring you thanks to Anita Eagle, who shared the images on social media for the first time in 2015 and has kindly allowed us to publish them here.
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37002 - Chelmer at Rushes Lock
A useful station due to data availability back to 1932. However, flow data is inacurate at low and high readings, due to bypassing which begins at 0.57 metres, presumably when the Lock Gates overflow. Upgraded in 1965, to increase max flow from 10 to 20 cumecs. Frustratingly the Level data is not available.
Data available from NRFA:
CDR: 1932-01-01 to 2017-12-31
GDF: 1932-01-01 to 2010-10-05
Reference:
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