The worst disaster to hit Victorian Britain happened in Sheffield on the night of March 11 1864 when more than 240 people lost their lives in less than an hour, swept to their deaths or drowned in their beds by 700 million gallons of water which burst like a fury through a breach in the Dale Dyke Dam above the city. The flood, an 18ft high wall of water, travelled at nearly twenty miles per hour through the heart of Sheffield, sweeping up everyone and everything in its path and carrying bodies, animals and wreckage as far as Doncaster.
Flood Waters , by Lett Rowe, tells the fictionalised story of how lives were lost and torn apart that night. The main characters are pure invention: others in the story are based on real people involved in the disaster. The facts relating to the flood itself – the dam, the burst, the destruction, the inquest, the aftermath – are historically correct, according to the records of the time.
The authors wish to thank Sheffield Local Studies Library and Archives Department for their help and support and Steve Stevlor for the photography. We would also like to acknowledge Samuel Harrison (A Complete Hiotory of the Great Flood at Sheffield) and Geoffrey Amey (The Collapse of the Dale Dyke Dam 1864) as valuable reference sources.
-- ABOUT FLOODWATERS --
-- IMAGES --
VISITORS TO THIS SITE
### Web Site Created By Scott Pilkington ###