Woman appeals for flooding memories for exhibition

A Bewdley woman who has been flooded 14 times is appealing for locals to share their memories of the River Severn bursting its banks for an exhibition.

Penny Griffiths and her late husband David moved to Dog Lane in 1992 and experienced repeated floods until barriers were erected.

She now she wants householders to share pictures, video footage and any written memories they have.

The Bewdley Museum exhibition will run between July and September next year, coinciding with work to install permanent flood defences on nearby Beales Corner.

Ms Griffiths said water had reached waist height in previous floods.

Their first flood occurred in the early 90s on Christmas Eve, when they returned after visiting friends to find four inches of water inside their home.

"It's about 14 floods over the years and only two insurance claims," she said.

"People would stop you and say have you got anywhere to stay... everyone offered so much help."

"Dog Lane, after the very bad floods in the 2000s was virtually empty with just probably three houses occupied, ourselves and our neighbours," Ms Griffiths said.

"If we hadn't had our barriers built, which I'm very grateful for, we would have had to move the kitchen upstairs."

She has begun collating photos and written memories with a longer term plan to create an online archive.

"I just felt we needed to keep this," she said.

She said she had material on flooding in 1947 and in the the 60s but was hoping for more recent photos and stories to be given to the museum.

"I've got an awful lot of stuff and the museum came over to have a look to see if they could use any of it for educational purposes and they went 'wow, this mustn't be lost'.

She added: "So in a hundred years time, people can come back and actually look at the true records of Bewdley, it's flooding, it's barriers, and hopefully the end of the flooding."

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