There is a constant demand for someone to do something to prevent future flooding of homes, particularly those beside the Botley Road.

I’ve thought about this problem many times but can’t see an easy answer.

One tends to forget that the wide flat plain stretching from Wolvercote to beyond the Abingdon Road and from Jericho to the rising ground above Hinksey was the original bed of the River Thames.

Shallow streams used to meander over this plain and deposit shifting islands of silt.

Today’s letters

In times past these streams were only a few centimetres deep but, if there was high rainfall in the Cotswolds it’s reckoned that the water could be up to half a metre deep and covering the whole area.

With global warming it’s almost certain that even more water will be flowing down from the Cotswolds.

I think one has to accept that this flood plain is getting less and less suitable as a place of human habitation and that, over time, those houses,most at risk, will have to be removed and those on the islands be protected with banking or walling. You cannot keep devising schemes to shift water off this plain because that only makes the situation worse for those downstream.

Derrick Holt

Fortnam Close,

Headington

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