Video: North Norfolk holiday cottage flooded

Sophie Wyllie Sunday, March 10, 2013
7:52 PM

An elderly couple’s north Norfolk holiday home was flooded after heavy rain hit Norfolk this weekend.

The damage inside the Happisburgh holiday cottage.

The old detached property on Whimpwell Street, Happisburgh, was waterlogged on the ground floor by last night.

It is owned by a couple from Essex who are in their 80s who were not staying in the cottage at the time.

Neighbour Fiona Howard, 49, said today (Sunday): “The ground floor is absolutely soaking and the carpets are up. The couple are very upset and distressed.”

She said water started coming off the nearby field yesterday morning and had got worse by the afternoon.

Villagers who turned to help with the flooding.

Firefighters gave advice yesterday but could not pump the water away and the road was blocked by Norfolk County Council’s Highways team in the evening.

It remained blocked this evening, while a group of eight neighbours and parish council chairman Glenn Berry rallied round to pump the water away themselves while they waited for a pump from the Highways team.

Early this morning the same group cleared the water from the holiday cottage by 2am but by 10am a foot of water had flooded back into the home.

The ground floor of a newly converted barn in Tunstead was flooded this weekend.

Neil Ackroyd, 52, who lives in Market Street, where the flooding happened said the man who lives in the barn had gone to live somewhere else in the meantime.

Firefighters from Wroxham were called to five properties along the road after 7.30pm yesterday and carried out salvage work and gave advice.

Mr Ackroyd said the water reached the front door of his detached home but had not flooded his house.

He added: “It does look like it is beginning to recede now, touch wood.”

For the full story see tomorrow’s EDP.