The Great Sheffield Flood of 1864

xchmp — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 05:46:55 -0800

Gunson looked up to see a breach appearing in the top of the dam. Feeling a sudden, violent, vibrating of the ground beneath his feet, he quickly scampered up the side of the embankment, luckily just in time, as a few seconds later there was a total collapse of a large section of the dam, unleashing a colossal mountain of water which thundered down the valley and on to the unsuspecting population below. For two hundred and fifty people who lived in Sheffield and the hamlets in the valley below the dam, this was to be their last night on Earth. Six hundred and fifty million gallons of water roared down the Loxley valley and into Sheffield, wreaking death and destruction on a horrific scale. Mostly forgotten today, the bursting of the Dale Dyke Dam resulted in the worst man-made flood in British history. Samuel Harrison's detailed account, A Complete History of the Great Flood at Sheffield, was written in the months after. The damage went far beyond the immediate toll on life and a special act of parliament resulted in one of the largest compensation claims of all time. Claimants ranged from servants whose gardens were ruined to an author and publisher whose autobiography was swept away. Even the army claimed for damages to Hillsborough Barracks, where the waters breached three-foot thick walls and drowned two of the Sergeant Paymaster's children.

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The Great Sheffield Flood of 1864