In the summer of 1879 one of these sudden floods occurred, and people standing on Evesham bridge, saw fallen trees and hay-cocks floating down the stream.  A pollard willow was noticed with a crew of about twenty land rats, which had found refuge there until the tree itself was lifted by the rising water and carried down the stream; and a floating hay-cock supported a man’s jacket, his jar of cider, and his “shuppick.”  The local word “shuppick,” a corruption of “sheaf-pike,” means a pike used for loading the sheaves of wheat in the harvest field on to the waggon, and is the “fork” in general use at hay-making.  During another summer flood the whole of the pleasure ground at Evesham, beside the Avon, was under water several feet deep; the water poured in at the lower windows of the adjoining hotel, and the proprietor’s casks of beer and cider in the cellars, ready for the regatta, were lifted from their stands and bumped against walls and ceilings.

Every parish has its Council in these days, and in country places almost every other person one meets is a councillor of some sort, and inclined to be proud of the distinction.  These Councils are excellent safety-valves for parochial malcontents who thus harmlessly let off superfluous steam which might otherwise ruffle the abiding calm of peaceful inhabitants, but their powers are really very limited.  In a village in Worcestershire where an approach road crossed a brook by a ford, during floods the current was sometimes so strong as to constitute a danger to horses and carts.  The village pundits therefore, in council duly assembled, considered the matter, and after an extended debate the following resolution was carried unanimously, “That a notice board be erected on the spot bearing the inscription:  When this board is covered with water it is dangerous to attempt to cross the ford.”

The numerous brooks in the Vale of Evesham supply ample water for the stock, but in more elevated parts, especially on the chalk Downs of Sussex, Hants, Wilts, and Dorset, provision is made for an artificial water supply by what are called “dewponds.”  A shallow saucer-shaped depression is dug out on the open Down, the bottom being made water-tight by puddling with a well-rammed layer of impervious clay.  The first heavy rainfall fills the pond, and, the water being colder than the air, the dew or mist condenses on its surface sufficiently, in ordinary weather, to maintain the supply.  In a dry time the sheep can always reach the water, the pond having no banks, by the shelving formation of the bottom.  Sometimes a few trees are allowed to grow round it; they also act as condensers, and their drip helps to fill the pond.  It is only in an abnormal drought that these dewponds really fail, and a thunderstorm, followed by ordinary weather, will soon refill them.  Gilbert White, in The Natural History of Selborne, refers to these ponds in a very interesting letter on the subject, including details of condensation