The flood marks on the Town Bridge recorded and recut
The flood marks on the upstream face of the Town Bridge, by the steps down to the Town Quay, have been cleaned, measured and recorded, and the two oldest lines have been recut where the stone had worn almost smooth.
There are five marks. The highest, for the flood of February 1648, is 2.64 metres above the normal summer level of the river. The others are for 1795, 1852, 1947 and July 2007. The 1648 line was itself recut when the bridge was widened in 1771, and the lettering beside it is of that date rather than the seventeenth century.
The work was done by a stonemason under the supervision of the county’s conservation officer and paid for from the Trust’s Bridge Fund, which was left to the Trust in 1994 for exactly this purpose. Our research volunteers have compared each mark with the borough records and newspaper reports, and the results are now in the River and Mill gallery.