The first half of January was notable for the filling up of flood plains around Eynsham. Anyone going over Swinford Toll Bridge could not have missed the extent of the Thames’s natural overflow. At the same time, much of the land around Eynsham Mill, further up the valley towards Bladon, and along the A40 towards Cassington, was under the Evenlode.
Nearly fifty years ago, when I lived in Eynsham for a year or so and regularly puttered on a Honda 50 over the Toll Bridge, I saw similar flooding there. So have local conditions got worse? Almost certainly, as the floods of 2007 and subsequently, and current sewage problems, testify. The Environment Agency issued a series of flood alerts on 1, 8, 9, 12 and 13 January for the Evenlode from Moreton to Cassington, and for the Glyme at Wootton and Woodstock. The Glyme flows into the Evenlode. Over those two weeks, the advice changed from “avoid using low-lying footpaths or entering areas prone to flooding” to “Flooding is possible – be prepared . . . Start acting on your flood plan if you have one”. If you have one.
You might expect the flooding to occur more or less in the same places each time. This has not been my experience on the land earmarked for Salt Cross Garden Village. Yes, when the brook that runs through City Farm rises to meet the twisted trunk of ivy on a certain tree, you can be sure that Lower Road will flood, as it did again on 12 January. But the standing water that is left behind as the water recedes varies in quantity, location and duration. Sometimes the ditches alongside the hedgerows are full, and sometimes not. This must be because of the subtle interplay between fluvial flooding from the brook, groundwater levels beneath the soil and surface water run-off from the fields. It also depends on the pattern of rainfall to the west and north. I have yet to work out the time-lag between heavy rain and rising waters in the local watercourses. Too many variables – chaotic mathematics.
Things can happen quickly even with a small brook. On 3 January, the brook level rose a good six inches (15 centimetres) in four hours (it was dusk by then, so may have risen further overnight). On one day last November it rose by a foot (30 centimetres) in six hours.
The variation has become particularly evident lately in the two fields immediately to the south of the brook, where the footpath to Church Hanborough passes the two City Farm cottages. Both fields been much nibbled by sheep in recent months, which has revealed regular undulations in the land. On recent occasions when the flood has spilled into these fields and then receded, it has left these undulations – or ditches – full of water, revealing their purpose and history.
In 1802, a Parliamentary Enclosure Act transformed the Eynsham landscape into one of “several” ownership (individual occupation) and hedgerow-divided fields. Previously, it was largely farmed in strips in the medieval open-field system. The method of ploughing each group of strips in the same direction left the land in ridges and furrows (shallow ditches), which were often oriented to allow the furrows to drain excess water into nearby watercourses, such as the City Farm brook. Ridges and furrows later disappeared under mechanised ploughing, but remained in certain fields that were kept for pasture and have never been mechanically ploughed since Enclosure. They exist still in a small area of the deserted village of Tilgarsley, in the north-west of Eynsham parish – and in the two fields mentioned above. History under our feet:
Ridge & Furrow
Now, they are waves unmoving in a sea
of grass, unnoticed until the sheep came
and cropped the field to its bones.
Then, ridges rose with the oxen’s progress
with plough and harrow along the furrow
while families cleared the stones.
They raised a monument to collective
subsistence in all seasons, as high-caste
as cathedrals or stately homes.
…..
You do not need to be reminded of the cold spells we have endured before and since Christmas. But even this month, there has been evidence of growth. Hazel trees have exploded into catkins in a demonstration of what can happen when you don’t cut a hedge. Before too long, the blackthorn and then the hawthorn will blossom.