By Nick Pollard
This postcard reminds us that floods do not only happen in the winter. There had been a heavy fall of snow in April 1908 (you may remember we had a day when it snowed heavily just last month), and when it melted in May, the Thames flooded badly. The scene is looking from Rus-sell Road from just outside the Ship Hotel, now replaced by flats. The caption reads ‘The Swans Nest. Duty amid difficulties. Father Thames’ little joke. The Thames Flood May 08 Shepperton’. This refers to the swan’s nest which can be seen in the distance on the left. It is actually sitting on what in normal times was (and still is) a small island, which has been totally covered by the floodwaters. One of the local boatmen has placed punting poles around the nest to stop it being swept away. Members of my mother’s family, the Rosewells, used to do this, as they hired out boats from their house opposite, adjoining the Red Lion pub (in fact their house is now part of the pub). Some of the punts which were normally hired out can be seen in the foreground – all the oars, punt poles and cushions etc were kept in racks in the hallway of the house. My grandfather, Russell Rosewell, was the last of the family to do this. He was an ex-pert punter and photos exist of him ferrying people around in later floods. He loved swans too and I can remember him drawing pictures of them for me in the front of one of my books when I was a child. To the right, and similarly marooned by the floods, is the boathouse of William Harris on Sandhills Meadow (now occupied by Gibbs Marine). Harris had taken over from Henry Lewis who had been there since the 1890s at least, and was in turn succeeded by Charles Thomas in the 1920s. I recently found another postcard captioned ‘The Swan’s Nest – The Sequel’, which shows a pair of swans swimming with several cygnets, so it’s good to know that these early efforts at conservation paid off.
Monthly meetings of the Sunbury and Shepperton Local History Society continue on Zoom while the cur-rent restrictions are in place. If you would like to join in with our series of talks on local history, see our website www.sslhs.org.uk for details.