Forum Topic

Diane Doyle · 02/11/2008 16:50:00

new.ActonW3.com Communtity Forum Topic posting

Flood areas in Acton?

We are looking at property to buy and i have just been told about an underground stream that runs along Rosemont rd Near the Twyford zone. Did this affect any of the flooding that happened several years ago and does it still affect any of the properties there? I have'nt been able to decipher the council website about flood risk.

Diane Doyle ● 6793d28 Comments

If you follow the links below you will see that there has been quite a lot of discussion on ChiswickW4 and the Ealing site.http://www.ealingtoday.co.uk/default.asp?section=community&link=http://nnet-server.com/server/app/forum/default.asp?site=2http://www.chiswickw4.com/default.asp?section=community&link=http://nnet-server.com/server/app/forum/default.asp?site=1Jim Lawes posted the following in 2004:A book called "The Lost Rivers of London" by Nicholas Barton..page 47..also mentions Bull Hollow Bridge,(later called Bollo Bridge) which crossed Boller Brook.There were seemingly several streams flowing Thames-wardfrom north of the Uxbridge Road.Geoffrey Rippingale's Acton Green Website has an 1822 Map showing one stream..coming down Bollo Lane?..and into Chiswick. The History Page includes the following text..www.actongreen.org"The area once had several small rivers. The Bollo Brook, according to a report published in 1826, originated near Fordhook,(West Acton) flowed under a bridge on the Uxbridge Road, and then ran south-eastward to Acton Green and finally into the grounds of Chiswick House via the NW corner of Turnham Green which was often prone to flooding. This report also says that in times of flooding the Bollo Brook flowed over Acton Common into the Stamford Brook further to the east. The Mill Hill Brook also flowed south from Mill Hill and then turned east along Acton Common into the Stamford Brook. Some later sources say that the Bollo Brook itself crossed Acton Common to the Stamford Brook. These brooks are now culverted, but the Bollo Brook still floods after heavy summer rain at the lower end of Bollo Lane and drains through Gunnersbury Triangle Nature Reserve."Nicholas Barton's Book also mentions more easterly streams . The Warple Stream ran down Horn Lane and flowed into...and feeding?..Ravenscourt Park lake.By 1900,another book states ..that there were 180 laundries in South Acton.."which was colloquially known as Soapsuds Island". The South Acton website also shows pictures of the many small houses in that area that have gateways and archways to backyard buildings..that were small laundries...a cottage industry?....examples of early outsourcing!Bollo is an unusual name though.The sewer works in Springfield and Acton Parks are supposed to fix the long running problem of flooding in Horn Lane, might be worth contacting Thames Water for adviceGood LuckIain

Iain Muir ● 6792d

Diane, be sure you check everything out before you purchase in Acton. I bought in Poet's Corner, the survey showed no flood risk, three months later my house was under 10 inches of sewage and thus began lengthy meetings, petitions and appearance on Watchdog. Finally we have Thames Water reacting, 2 further floods and £2k worth of flood doors later! The message is: please do not satisfy yourself with the legal searches, do some research yourself via Thames Water and knock on the doors of the property's neighbours - you will learn allot. Final word of advice: don't buy a house with a lower ground floor anywhere in London, we are, after all, sinking! Good luck.

Kendra Elizabeth Clemo ● 6785d

Bollo = Bull Hollow

John Theodore Clark ● 6785d

I am glad to hear a straight forward comment. When other members start being pesonal it really does detract from what this site should be about. When the flooding happened I was in Kent so I am grateful to hear the opinions of local residents who have been through this situation. Any relevant information is very welcome - then I can form my own opinion.

Diane Doyle ● 6782d

Diane, the basements of the large houses in Horn Lane, opposite Grafton Road / Accacia Road have always flooded during heavy rainfall. Not surprising really as they at the bottom of the hill which is at the top of Grafton Road/Goldsmith Avenue.We are hopeful that the works that Thames Water are presently carrying out will solve the problem. It is certainly costing enough money.So, if you want to make sure when buying somewhere in Acton you need to be at the top of the hill.Don't let you it put you off, it is a very nice place to live, and so convenient for travelling to anywhere in the country or around London.

Dee Cook ● 6782d

Where is the personal remark. Everyone has been helpful. I suspect you are referring to John's post, which was simply a reply to the penultimate line in the previous one.Here is his answer again in a different formAbundant water came in the form of two rivers heading to the Thames at Hammersmith, Stamford Brook and Bollo ("bull hollow") Brook.

Bob Crossley ● 6782d

Acton is poasibly far less flood-vulnerable than say Fulham, 50% of which is below the high water mark. Another 5 feet or so on the Thames high tide level at its peak and the defences could not cope. I'm not sure it would even take 5 feet to defeat the defencs. A separate issue is whether in heavy rain the storm drains can clear a combination of rain falling in pleanty leaving the gorund so saturated that LT investment might have to sell its nteest in Waterloo station

Dan Filson ● 6291d

...continuing and extending the digression on this thread....a bull hollow (I think) is a road along which cattle have been driven from pasture to market; this causes the road to become a muddy quagmire and the centre of the road "hollows" out, leaving raised areas to the side. This is certainly the origin of the Holloway Road in north London, the route of cattle on the way to Spitalfields market

Peter Todd ● 6291d

Re the route of cattle on the way to Spitalfields market xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx what an interesting thread this has developed into. I have made reference in posts before to an elderly person near to where I live and who was the most interesting and knowledgeable soul I have ever met, so much so I video'd him for some of his experiences / information. He told me as a young child he played in a stream that ran across Ealing Common and which had disappeared when his family returned to Ealing from a spell in Hungerford. He went to the Council who denied there ever had been a stream there, banned him from the offices due to his persistence and eventually brought miners down from up North ( pres. unemployed at the time ) and who dug up and found the stream. He also told me Acton, Vale in particular , was awash with laundries 'cos the underwater streams etc flowed through a large cemetary and picked up calcium from the bones !!. How true that was I don't know, but made an interesting story. He also told me there was an aircraft factory , Napiers I think, where he worked for a while and they had an underground test rig for jet engines, which when fired, made the whole of Acton reverberate.

Tony Price ● 6291d

Bones made the water soft? That is really a good one. He was probably told it as a child, to keep him from drinking stream water. I think the truth is that the local water is naturally soft. That accounts for the number of breweries and laundries that were in the area. The water that we get today is piped in from outside.

John Theodore Clark ● 6291d

Yes, there was an aircraft manufacturing business in Acton, documented in quite a number of books of the area.Back to flooding ... for anyone buying, I'm not aware of any floods in the Rosemont Road, Buxton Gardens, Chatsfield area. Spring (after which Springfield Park is named) runs below the some homes on Rosemont Road but doesn't cause flooding that I am aware of unless you begin excavating for a basement.

Kim Bobsin ● 6290d

Bones are calcium aren't they?Calcium is what makes water hard not soft.

Bob Crossley ● 6290d

Starch Green takes its name from the endless laundries in the area.You can tell where water courses run by looking at old maps and in particular field boundariesIt used to be the case that if you walked at the northwest corner of Wormwood Scrubs, the mushiness of the land and the reedy type grasses (I'm not into plants much) told you there was a source of water there. The position changed a bit when the massive works were done to build the Eurostar depot. The stream ran down in culverts or sewers along Old Oak Common Lane, Old Oak Lane and Askew Road and flows into Revenscourt Park. Also flowing into Ravenscourt Park is the Stamford Brook which flows down from Acton by the route of the old railway line then swinging along Goldhawk Road to enter the park. The waters flowed from Ravenscourt Park along the route of Nigel Playfair Avenue into a creek feeding into the Thames at the western end of what is now Furnival Gardens. The Hammersmith Town Hall extension in King Street had problems, when built in the very early 1970s, with its foundations which were found to be decidedly soggy.

Dan Filson ● 6290d

There is an underground stream that runs through cumberland park and under goldsmith avenue, some of the houses on the west side of goldsmith avenue have had to have their cellars protected and one I know has a pump installed should the brook overflow. It's wise to check before you buy.Bollo Brook used to flow into Stamford Brook (hadn't heard about Bull-Hollow before).Acton was extremely well known for the number of springs,wells and brooks running through it. Infact Acton Wells (near wormwood scrubs)was a posh spar-resort in the Victorian and Georgian era, (one of the reasons for setting the Olympics in White City) it even had it's own branch line to ferry those seeking to take the waters.

Jeremy Thorpe-Woods ● 6288d

lol... why does it do that?

Jeremy Thorpe-Woods ● 6288d

Re why does it do that? xxxxxxxxxxxx you should try the Ealing one, even worse

Tony Price ● 6288d

Double clicking."Acton Wells (near wormwood scrubs)was a posh spar-resort in the Victorian and Georgian era, (one of the reasons for setting the Olympics in White City) it even had it's own branch line to ferry those seeking to take the waters" Nice idea, but the more prosaic reason for the Exhibition before WW1 being based in the White City area was that the land was there and not yet built on, and the tube line (Central Line) had got out as far as Shepherds Bush and so provided the means of mass transport to get the paying masses to come. Once the stadium was built it was right for the Olympics. I don't think spa waters had anything to do with it! I also would take with a pinch of salt any notions of there being a fashionable spa in the area in Georgian times. This doesn't seem borne out by local maps. The existence of Wells, i.e. sources of streams, is however obviously right. Not sure the water course along Bollo Road ever linked up with the Stamford Brook though - doesn't seem likely - where could it have done so?

Dan Filson ● 6286d

I have a book written by Thomas & Avril Harper-Smith (local historians and leading lights of the Acton History Group until Tom died and Avril moved out of London).It shows a print of 'Acton Wells assembly room' c1770. They say: 'Minerals found in three wells near Old Oak produced a miniature spa from 1670 to 1775. Its bottled water was sold in London.'The building is a modest one storey structure - doesn't quite look like the Bath Assembly Rooms...If people want to check on the route of the Stamford Brook there is an informative display in front of the little garden at the junction of Mill Hill Road and Crown Street.

Lorna Dodd ● 6285d

(Digging up an old thread here). I've just been reading Nicholas Barton's 'The Lost Rivers of London', which describes a now underground stream "known locally as the Warple, ran down the west side of Horn Lane, and then turned eastward to flow down to Ravenscourt Park".So that's probably why the basements of the large houses on Horn Lane experience flooding. Really interesting book.

Steven Kealey ● 5355d

And probably how Warple Way got its name. The map shows the stream flowing along there.

Steven Kealey ● 5355d

I also have this book and was surprised at how many rivers and such run under Acton, particularly the river running almost the whole length of Horn Lane. The fold-out map at the back is very interesting.A good read for anyone thinking of digging out their basement for extra living accomodation. Have heard of a couple of people doing this and then wondering why, after a downpour, the basement floods !!

Ellie Rose ● 5355d

Here is an extract from that map:

Jim Lawes ● 5352d

Acton Wells must have been called that for a reason!We were told there were springs and wells and rivers all over the Acton area - apparetnly there's one near the back of our house between Goldsmith Avenue and Cumberland Park.Someone told me the presence of frogs was a bit of a giveaway - but only the neighbours have seen those - not us.

Sara Nathan ● 5352d

I was told that Stamford Brook used to flow from around the north-west corner of North Acton Playing Fields where I remember there were fish ponds, along Allan Way, turning to flow through the current back gardens of houses between the Western Avenue and Park Royal Road, then through more fish ponds between Park Royal Road and York Road, all now below ground and used as a main sewer. Certainly there is a sewer that follows that route, but I have wondered whether it used to flow more towards Mansfield Road, although streams in that area may have drained towards the Brent. Any streams in the area may have been re-routed because the railways in the area are dug into cuttings.I do not think I will be too bothered by deep flooding because of the nearby Central Line, and there is a huge new sewer planned only a couple of hundred yards away called HS2.

Chris Bell ● 5352d

I think A.P.P.L.E. have a spring that is part of the Warple at the front of the ART BLOCK in East Acton Lane. It appeared after the Thames Water flood work in Acton Park a couple of years ago. It was dry before that. It comes up through a purpose built drain that was built at the same time as the building (the old public toilets in the park)We use it to fill our pond.

Vicki Barker ● 5352d

Take care, there may be no separation between clean spring water or rain water and sewage, many of the streams were used as sewers even before they were buried underground.

Chris Bell ● 5352d

We have had no problems yet.3 years. In fact we had watercress growing until someone chucked a kentucky fried chicken in over the fence.

Vicki Barker ● 5351d