Margaret Gauntlett

Margaret: If it came up high enough that it came through the Angel yard my dad put planks down for us to get out. If it didn’t come out that high we could walk out, but then they used to put the planks down in Pewterers Alley, round the back of the police station and that was how we got to school. So you went over the bridge and went through the alleys on the planks and out round the back of the police station and the garage and out to school. So you never missed a day of school.

For people who had to get to work and had to get across the bridge to get the buses, because the buses would come from Kidderminster as far as the garage and then turn round and go back. So people like Dad who worked in Kidderminster they’d have to get across the bridge and get the bus to get to work. So everybody still carried on going to work and school same as ever. You didn’t stop because of that. 
We were told to go and stand at the top of the steps and count how many the steps the water has come up because that gave them an idea of how fast it was rising. They could judge it by, you know, time to start moving everything. And I can remember Uncle Stans Joan’ s dad, come and help our dad move furniture, put stuff on top of the table and take things upstairs. Yeah we just lived upstairs for a week or however long.

Well we had a big dining table and I can remember we had a big old-fashioned sideboard, and so they’d empty it, I presume they took all that upstairs and I remember Dad and Uncle Stan lifting that up and putting it on top of the table. We didn’t have fitted carpets or anything like that because they all had to be rolled up and taken up upstairs. Stuff was just all put upstairs and you just had to manoeuvre yourself round it basically.  

And one of my vivid memories is sitting, cause Gran’s bedroom is the front bedroom, sitting in there at night listening to the river rushing past because it was literally just outside the window. And I can still remember that, hearing that noise of the water. And another thing I remember quite vividly is after the water had gone down and it used to drain out of the cellar because it was a flagstone floor, Mum and Dad spending hours with buckets of water scrubbing it clean and the smell, I remember that smell so clearly, of like wet coal dust and river water mixed. And they’d be coming up with buckets of black water to chuck away, and they had to scrub it all out to get it clean again.