A number of myths have grown up following the 20 July floods. This page aims to explore some of these ideas. The driver for most of these myths seems to be a desire to find someone whose actions caused the floods - rather than to recognise that the major cause was an natural event, namely the very heavy rainfall.
One myth going the rounds is that the carrying away of the wooden footbridge on Denchworth Road was due to vandalism (e.g. this claim was made at the 5 October public meeting to discuss the floods). This idea is not credible as the footbridge was lifted up and carried away in one piece. To achieve this the footbridge must have been subject to a very large force from below. The flood water in the Brook is the credible candidate to cause this. It is hard to believe that vandals could achieve such a neat result or that they would have been motivated to get in the flooded Brook to lift the bridge. If you look through the pictures of the flooding on Denchworth Road, you can clearly see that the footbridge was first pushed upwards out of its normal position, it was then turned end-on to the flow of the Brook and finally floated down the stream to end up by the stone footbridge on the north side of the Green. This is just the natural behaviour a large wooden object when subject to the forces created by the Brook in flood. There seems to be no need to invoke vandalism.
Another myth propagated at the 5 October public meeting is that the flooding in Vale Avenue was caused by surface water. This is patently untrue. The damaging phase of the flood in Vale Avenue was caused water from Letcombe Brook where it burst its banks around the children's playground. Once that happened, there was little to stop it reaching Main Street from where it flowed downslope to accumulate in the low point of Vale Avenue, flooding at least four houses and threatening others. This damaging phase which occured after 17:00 on 20 July, long after the rain had stopped and the Sun had come out. It was preceded by a separate surface water flood that peaked around 15:00 without entering any houses. For more information on this double-peaked flood see the diagram of flood levels.