The great Tees floods of 1771, Teesdale Mercury

The great Tees floods of 1771

Aug 7, 2007

FLOODS have been in the news a lot recently. This calls to mind one of the worst floods on the River Tees, a disaster that happened almost 240 years ago, one very wet day in November 1771.

One eye witness of the events of that day was Thomas Jopling of Cotherstone who made his living by dyeing cloth. On 7th December 1771 Mr. Jopling described the flood in a letter to his sister and her husband. His dyehouse must have been close to the Tees for he wrote that the swollen river had broken down a length of about twenty yards of wall nearby. What's more, the floodwaters had swept the dam away. He related how the flood had destroyed the low mill on the Tees near Barnard Castle. The mill was ‘all swept away' he wrote. Thomas Jopling also wrote to his sister that someone had told him that the mill house was seen to go ‘whole' through Barney bridge - an unlikely tale.

The 1771 flood was accorded a good deal of space by John Sykes in his famous 1833 book ‘Local Records'. Much of Sykes' description is concerned with Yarm, near Stockton, where the height of the water in the High Street can still be seen on a marker outside the town hall. Yarm seems to have fared worse than anywhere else along the Tees, but Sykes does tell us a little about the effects of the flood in Teesdale. High Force was in full spate of course, and in Sykes' words was ‘most awfully sublime'. It must have been quite a spectacle!

Sykes also had a story about a dyer, not from Cotherstone this time, but in Barnard Castle. According to the story, the dyer was dyeing a few pieces of tammies in his kettle in the cellar when the cellar was flooded. My dictionary defines tammy as ‘fine worsted cloth of good quality', while a kettle was a large cauldron. The floods began to recede in the small hours and when daylight came the dyer went to inspect the damage. There was a layer of sand and mud at the top of the kettle but the tammies below weren't spoiled. They had turned out rather different from the colour he'd intended, but he quite liked them. According to Sykes, the cloth was sent to London for sale and was so much admired that another order soon arrived for more cloth of the same unusual colour! Needless to say, the unfortunate dyer was never able to reproduce the same shade.

The great flood of 1771 was not confined to the Tees. Other Northern rivers, including the Wear and the Tyne were also affected.

The disaster prompted William Garret, a Newcastle bookseller and occasional author, to write a book about it. His slim volume ‘An Account of the Great Floods in the Rivers Tyne, Tees, Wear, Eden &c in 1771 and 1815' was published in Newcastle in 1818. From this we learn that over a hundred yards of the turnpike road in the dip between Winston and Gainford was ‘entirely washed away'. At Gainford the flood ‘carried away about seven yards of the churchyard with the coffins and corpses'. Some of them apparently ended up at Blackwell near Darlington - quite a distance. The walk mill at Piercebridge was ‘driven away' by the floodwaters, while at Low Coniscliffe the Tees was estimated to be half a mile wide.

William Garret did not have a great deal to say about the floods in the higher parts of Teesdale. Perhaps the problems there weren't so serious. The worst disaster was at Startforth, just by Barnard Castle Bridge. The Tees burst over the top of the bridge on the Yorkshire side and the force of the water weakened the foundations of nearby houses. Eight houses were demolished some of them completely. Fortunately nobody was drowned or killed by falling masonry, although three ladies had a narrow escape. These three, a mother and daughter and the maid, were trapped in one of the houses near the river. In spite of their calls for help, no-one was able to rescue them. Not only was the water rising, but the houses on either side were beginning to collapse. The gable end of their house collapsed while they were still inside but they were unhurt. When the waters subsided at about two o'clock in the morning, the three ladies were rescued.

Animals were at greater risk than humans.

Several cattle were drowned in the fields around Barnard Castle and at Barforth near Gainford a horse was drowned. It must have been a miserable time for local farmers, and for anyone who lived close to the river.

The great flood of 1771 wasn't the only Tees flood in the 18th century, but it does seem to have been the worst.

By Jinny Howlett (first published in the Teesdale Mercury August 1, 2007)