Looking forwards/Looking back with Alan Dearling in Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire
I very recently spent four nights back visiting my close friends, Ian and Pauline in Malvern. Back in the late 1980s/early ‘90s, I lived with them in Malvern Link and on a boat that they totally refitted/rebuilt at their Starline Narrowboats Boatyard, which was then located in the Marina on the far bank of the River Severn from the town of Upton-upon-Severn. It’s a notorious area prone to floods. As you will read, I was there in 2007. Much of Upton was affected by serious flooding in 2000. In the 2007 floods, levels far exceeded those in 2000, and the town became literally an island in the midst of flood waters. It was inaccessible by road.
Over many years I was involved in helping organise and promote blues and other music events. Upton plays host to annual blues, jazz and folk festivals.
So, it was fascinating to return now in 2025 to where I had much earlier lived on my narrowboat home, and consider what happened in 2007, and the resultant attempts to make homes and businesses protected from flooding. Here’s a brief snippet from Clare Lissaman, BBC News in 2012:
“Upton upon Severn has been dubbed ‘the most flooded town in Britain’ but the speed and ferocity of the flood five years ago remains etched on residents’ memories. Grahame Bunn, landlord of the Kings Head, carried about £18,000 of stock into his cellar on 19 July, 2007, as he prepared for his busiest weekend, the annual blues festival. Some tourists had already arrived in the pretty Worcestershire town and although the weather was a bit grim, people were in good spirits. But soon torrential rain started to fall. And fall. And from the winter of 2005 temporary barriers were brought in to protect the town every time the prospect of flooding loomed.
Photos of temporary barriers 2006. Ian Cundy
Mr Bunn said the barriers, stored about 40 miles away near Kidderminster, had been ‘up and down like a fiddler’s elbow’ in their first 16 months of use. The lowest parts of his riverside pub flooded quite often and the building was ‘completely flooded and shut’ 10 weeks after he took over the leasehold in 2000, so he had grown to accept it – at least in winter.
‘But then 2007 was just the flood from hell’, he said.
Unusually the high flows originated in the River Teme, a Severn tributary, which meant there was little warning, he said. ‘And the motorways came to a standstill and some people’s journeys that normally take an hour were taking eight hours and some people weren’t even able to get where they were going and they had to stay in hotels. And unfortunately our barriers were stuck on the motorway and couldn’t make it here.’
But the July flood brought a historic change for Upton as it led to the town getting permanent flood defences in a £4.5m project.”
Back in 2007 I was en route to the Upton Blues Festival when the flood became a veritable catastrophic deluge. Here’s what I wrote together with some pretty epic images.
Upton Got The Blues……..
Briefly (ish). I was heading to help out at Upton in Worcester’s Blues Festival. I got stuck in a train 500 metres outside Droitwich station for about four hours. They wouldn’t let us off to walk the rest. Then, when we did reach the station there were no staff, no buses, no trains. Eight of us hired a mini-bus to head to Malvern, but the flood gave the taxi driver the willies and he dumped us in Worcester. I hung around the station for about three hours. No accommodation was available, no emergency facilities that we could find, so at about 8.30 pm I went on a wander around the pubs in search of a room. The Cricketers led to the Toby and thence to the end the line at the Five Ways. This is a seedy disco pub. Friday and Saturday’s fighting guaranteed. I shared with two delightful lads. A 32 year old who had psychiatric problems after the Iraq war and Alan, his 18 year old side kick, who seemed marginally nicer. They’d decided that as they were cut off they were going to party. I bought them a beer then headed to an Indian restaurant and a bit of civilisation. They got back to the room at about 3 am and recounted their tales (loudly) for a couple of hours. I pretended to be asleep.
Basically, Ali, the older one, bragged about the series of fights and getting thrown out of two clubs, Images, and somewhere else. It ran along the lines: ‘Well when you held that geezer in the stripey vest – the fat little cunt – he’d tried to hit me after I told him I was proud to be English and a BNP member. The bouncer hit you and we got thrown out. And then we picked up Ailsee, she was 15 – got her mobile number, Alan?’ Lots of text messages later they went to snoresville.
I fled with my big rucksack full of camping gear at about 7.30 am and was told that all buses and trains were cancelled indefinitely. Ian, my boat-building friend, was cut off at Upton Marina, but I was in touch on my mobile, so Plan B3 was for me to get a taxi out of Worcester on the A38, then to walk towards Upton and Ian would try to reach me from the other direction. Some of the floods were about three foot deep – pretty tricky. After about six miles I got a lift (Thanks Pam and Chris!) and so I told Ian to turn back and I was dropped at the Marina. The other two roads into Upton were impassable.
Ian was busy trying to convince boaters to get their cars out of the Marina – he reckoned that it would become cut off that night, possibly for as long as a week or more. He was correct but only some folk took his advice. The caravan park next door was completely wrecked by early evening and the owner had to be rescued by a Sea King helicopter on the Sunday morning.
No music had happened on the Friday night but at least four bands played on Saturday night. Not great but Barfly were good in the rather depressing Memorial Hall. Ian left for his home in Malvern early on, but there were lots of revellers on the Upton streets, and I drank through most of the day with other friends and slept in the Marina office, which meant taking off my gumboots to wade the last 200 metres in nearly waist deep cold water.
Sunday morning I helped move piles of equipment, bedding, people and motorbikes to relative safety. The police sealed off the town early in the afternoon and the army were being drafted in to ferry people stranded in newly formed little islands. The water by then was three miles wide.
A surreal moment on Sunday morning was when GMTV and BBC News24 both arrived at the Marina looking for someone to ‘save’ as they had the crack Cheshire rescue crew with them. No-one needed saving. OK, we were surrounded by water, but we could wade through less than waist deep water for about 100 metres to get to the bridge into Upton. But they weren’t to be thwarted. A group of boaters volunteered to be rescued. The three women went off to the toilet block to apply make-up. They were kitted out with life jackets and in the interview I heard one of the women saying: ‘We feared for our lives. It was so frightening. We weren’t worried for our possessions…’ Load of bullshit. And so they were rescued for two of our national news channels.
In the afternoon, I fled once more, with Ian and Pauline to their home in Malvern and there we had plenty of booze and listened to some of Ian’s fine music collection. Monday and off to London for meetings. Back to Scotland Thursday night.
Upton meanwhile was attempting in the wake of the by then abandoned blues festival to organise a street party with booze and flood damaged furniture donated for free by the three waterfront pubs, the King’s Head, the Swan and the Plough. Those putting it on were expecting a few musos to provide some entertainment. I really hope everyone had fun.
And that is the tale of how Upton really got a river full of blues…
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As of February 2025, according to the UK government flooding on-line site: There are no flood warnings or alerts in this area. That seems great news!
In my recent visit, it was interesting to see for myself that the Environment Agency has worked with the community to develop a permanent flood scheme to replace temporary barriers along the Waterfront area. Apparently, this has been a £4.4 million scheme, which consisted of 2 phases, protecting the most at risk properties located in two separate flood areas known as ‘New Street’ and ‘Waterside’. 2012 was when the new flood protection scheme at Waterside was opened by Harriett Baldwin, MP for West Worcestershire and Mayor Andrea Morgan. The Waterside scheme defends 64 properties with a 1 in 150 chance of flooding in any given year. It consists of a permanent flood wall with glass panels 450 millimetres high along its length to maintain the view of the river.
I hope for the sake of the local residents, businesses and visitors that the new flood protection measures prove mega-effective. However, from my recent visit, it all looks still very vulnerable. And very, very muddy indeed.
Here’s what was published in the Daily Mail On-line 8th January 2024:
“Welcome to Upton IN Severn! As families mop up from flood chaos that has left towns marooned.
The residents of Upton upon Severn have always considered themselves a riverside community, but yesterday they were getting used to life as an island. The town, surrounded on all sides by murky brown floodwater, is just one of the many areas across the country devastated in the aftermath of last week’s Storm Henk.”
Sky News 5th January 2024 video: https://news.sky.com/video/uk-flooding-how-do-we-stop-communities-being-devastated-by-flooding-13042801
Here’s a photo from my February 2025 visit showing a large pumping engine close on the town-side of the flood Severn barriers. So, presumably, there has recently been a need to pump out flood water.
Below, a reminder of 2007 floods, and a much more positive pic from the 2008 Upton Blues Festival with my mate Allan Jones, left in the photo, sharing the blues with Graham Robinson and Michael Roach… (Thanks to Ian and Pauline for friendship and help with images).
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