page_title: Aldermaston
section_title: Flooding
hierarchical_section_title: Aldermaston / Geography / Flooding
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of wall grilles as a flood defense/prevension mechanism in Aldermaston, Berkshire
context_page_description: Aldermaston is a mostly rural, dispersed settlement, civil parish and electoral ward in Berkshire, England. In the United Kingdom Census 2011, the parish had a population of 1015. The village is in the mid-Kennet alluvial plain and bounds to Hampshire in the south. It is roughly equidistant from Newbury, Basingstoke and Reading, centred 46 miles west-by-south-west of London.
  Aldermaston may have been inhabited as early as 1690 BCE; a number of postholes and remains of cereal grains have been found in the area. Written history of the village is traced back at least as far as the 9th century CE. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles show that the Ealdorman of Berkshire had his country estate in the village. The manor of Aldermaston was established by the early 11th century, when the village was given to the Achard family by Henry I; the manor is documented in the Domesday survey. The village church was established in the 13th century, and some of the original Norman architecture remains in the building's structure.
  The last resident Lord of the Manor, Charles Keyser, died in 1929.
context_section_description: The quite flat low clay of Aldermaston's north has with exceptional rainfall led to flooding certain populous streets on three occasions — 1971, 1989, and 2007. The flood in 1971 caused by torrential rain was exacerbated by the non-porous tarmac and buildings of the Atomic Weapons Establishment which managed for the first time to overwhelm its balancing ponds. This happened again in July 1989, when an average of 6 inches (150 mm) of rain was deposited across the parish in two hours; water rose 5 feet (1.5 m) above the ponds and broke through a brick wall. The destroyed wall was rebuilt with 17 grilles to avoid another build-up of water. A donation of £10,000 was given to the village by Blue Circle.
  In July 2007, torrential rain flooded some of the traditional village centre and primary school. The storm coincided with the annual Glade music festival and jeopardised the event. The festival gates were temporarily closed while organisers assessed the flooding, which submerged one of the stages. The festival's car park was incapacitated, with thousands of revellers stranded in the village and surrounding lanes.
  The floods also hit the Church of England primary school, with the Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service evacuating pupils and staff from the school in life rafts. The evacuation used four rafts, rescuing pupils and teachers from the school through windows. The 165 people (140 pupils and 25 members of staff) were taken uphill to the parish hall, where blankets and sleeping bags had been provided.
  Ian Henderson, a police constable at Thames Valley Police stated that the emergency services were "really stretched because of what happened over the county and the Glade event", that "the [A340] junction was two or three-foot under water", and predicted that "a lot of householders [would be] homeless."
caption: The flood grilles on Church Road (the rebuilt section of the wall is lighter than the older sections)
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