Report of a flood - 1686

Elsewhere on the History Group website we have a slideshow made up of photographs taken during recent local floods. This anecdote, however, is a report of a flood, written by a vicar of Kildwick, that took place in Wharfedale in 1686.

The report takes the form of a letter, written by the vicar to a friend. This was later published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and is now available on the web as part of the Internet Archive.

Click here to read.

Notes: In the text the vicar is referred to only as RP, but this must have been Richard Pollard who was vicar of St. Andrew's between 1678 and 1697.
The document, although printed, uses old script; so you should read most of the "f" characters as "s".

Posted 27/08/2016