Sir, As I drove through Nuneham Courtenay last week to visit my 90-year-old mother, I was saddened to see the sandbags against the cottage doors and the devastation left by the flood water.

My mother was born in Nuneham and lived at the lower end until she married. She has never known the village to be flooded in her lifetime.

I grew up at Marsh Baldon. As a child I walked down Baldon Lane with my family to Nuneham. On the way we would often meet the road sweeper - not a machine, a warm body! This hard-working man would regularly clear leaves and debris from the drains and gullies enabling water to drain off the lane, and into the ditches on either side. As children we ran along the banks and jumped over the gullies.

My paternal grandfather worked on a farm on the high ground at Nuneham. One of his tasks was "hedgin' and ditchin'", laying hedges and clearing out ditches, which drained water off the fields, and eventually into the streams and rivers.

Forget climate change and freak weather conditions, the damage was done long ago, when hedges were uprooted, fields made into prairies, and ditches and ponds filled in. If common sense had prevailed, I am sure the residents of Nuneham Courtenay would not be suffering today.

If the farmers, University, local authority and Thames Water act now to re-establish the ditches and natural water courses, future suffering could be alleviated.

Linda Messenger (nee Middleton), Northleach