Your History: Flooding in Brecon

This newspaper description of the ‘Great Storm at Brecon’ on 26th January 1884, gives a vivid picture of the local destruction.

“From one o’clock to five the gale was at its height. Chimney pots, slates, strips of lead, and other dangerous missiles, were falling intermittently thick and fast. During the afternoon a large beech in close proximity to the new wall that has been built in Lion Street, adjacent to Watton Mount Mansion, fell inwards with a terrific boom.

A poplar growing on the Free Street side of the mansion also snapped asunder during the progress of the storm’s destructive work. This tree, again, fell inwards, and thus possibly saved a catastrophe.

The scene of the storm’s fury was visited by hundreds of people on Sunday. Some of the large trees on Penlan and Buckingham Place property were uprooted and otherwise damaged. Mount Street received the full force of the storm, as the miscellaneous wreckage strewed on the roadway showed. Camden Road did not escape, Mrs Gibson’s house suffering the most, a large hole being made in the attic roof; the water poured into almost ever y house; a window sash was blown in at the Brecon Infirmary.”

www.blfhs.co.uk

© Breconshire Local & Family History Society