On Christmas Eve morning the Environment Agency issued a Flood Alert for the River Kennet from Berwick Bassett to Newbury including Winterbourne Monckton, Marlborough and Ramsbury: “Flooding of roads and low lying land is expected.”
Flood Alert is the general notification of possible flooding. No specific Flood Warnings were issued for the Marlborough area.
The Flood Alert, prompted by the heavy pre-Christmas rains, covered the Kennet and also the River Og, the River Aldbourne, the Froxfield Stream, the River Dun and the River Shalbourne.
As the Environment Agency’s chart of automatically recorded levels of the River Kennet at Marlborough shows (see below), the Kennet reached a peak around midnight on Christmas Eve and is now falling steadily. It had come close to the levels at which flooding is thought possible.
On Christmas Day morning the river was certainly full, flowing fast and was mud-coloured. But it was well below the new flood defences at Town Mill and there was no flooding into nearby fields.
While parts of the south-west and the south-east of England saw many rivers bursting their banks and some very damaging floods, Marlborough has escaped.