This chapter is pretty much all factual. Details are taken from the EDP and a booklet called A Village Shop by Freda Starr.

Of course the storm was the talking point in the town and all the surrounding towns for the next period of time. Everyone wanted to know why it had happened, whether it might happen again, why they weren’t warned.

The Eastern Daily Press ran stories about it each day, and Malcolm bought a paper and brought it home with him each night. They gradually began to piece together the series of events.

First of all it had been a high tide – and 7 in the evening is when high tide is at its highest. Then there had been a strong wind – some say it was 100 miles per hour and some had it at 120. Then came the breaking of the sea defences – walls and stone barriers that had been built up naturally by the sea bringing in rocks over the years, and others which had been built specifically to keep the sea out. There had been many other floods in Cley – one only six years previously, but this was the worst in history. The last big one was in 1893 – and before that there was a bad one in 1853.

“I know about that one,” thought Mollie, but she didn’t say anything out loud.

Stories began appearing in the paper of the numbers of people who died. Only 2 had died in the nearby villages - none in Cley itself. One woman in Salthouse, the neighbouring village had broken her leg at the start of the flood, and her husband had put her on the dining room table. The force of the water washed her out the window and she was drowned.

For the whole storm, which swept the entire East coast, the death toll was 307. Over 5000 homes in Norfolk were destroyed or badly damaged. The country’s sea defences were broken in 2,000 places and nearly 40,000 acres of farmland were flooded.

The papers called the flood a surge on top of a spring tide. The predicted water level was to 22.9 feet on that night, but the actual level was 31 feet, making the surge 8 feet 1 inch.

Amongst the other causes as well as the wind were the heavy rains, and the state of the moon which of course controls the tides on the high seas and the rotation of the earth. There had been a full moon two days previously and the winds of hurricane force had started in the Orkneys and Moray and built as they progressed down the coast of the North Sea. The normal ebb of the tide was blocked by the fury of the wind. 

Mollie clipped the articles from the EDP as she felt it was something that the children in years to come would like to know more about it. But, she of course had missed much of the fear of that first night when the flood came.

In the spring, when all the mess had been got under control, and most people were back to normal lives, it was decided that there should be a ceremony to reward the bravery of those who saved lives, and also a chance to hear the stories of those who were in danger on the night of the great flood. Malcolm and Mollie planned to ask their neighbours to babysit and go. Malcolm was still disappointed that Mollie refused to come forward with information to thank the woman who had rescued her, but she was adamant.

One of the first to tell her story was Freda Starr who runs the drapery and food shop in High Street. A woman nearing 50 now, she and her sister Ivy took over from their father George and also employed Charlie Francis who runs the grocery section. She said the following:

“A strong wind had been blowing all Friday and reached gale force on Saturday and it was then in the right direction for a high tide. It grew worse and worse, so we put in our tide boards, complete with mud, and proceeded to clear the lower shelves in the shop, show-room and warehouses. We also took up our dining room carpet and put it on the shop counter, out of the way of the water, as we thought, should it come into the house. We started to do this about 5.15 p.m. carrying on until about 6 o'clock. The water was in to about a depth of 8 ins by this time (our cat was on the front stairs and it was really amusing to see him. He was watching the water rise, his head going backwards and forwards, and I'm sure he was thinking 'Whatever are they doing now-putting all this water in my house!')

“Charlie was busy down in the warehouse, trying to decide where to put the seed potatoes, which had been just delivered in hundredweight bags. I left him to put them where he thought safe, returned to the shop, glanced through the glass door leading into the house and noticed the water had gone down to about two inches in depth. So I went back to Charlie and said "Don't bother about moving the potatoes, the water has gone down a lot." (We were rather surprised, as high tide wasn't until after 8 p.m.).

"We returned to the shop straightaway, but in those few seconds the water had risen to a depth of four feet in the dining room and we were unable to open the door and get into the house! We did not know at the time, but what happened was, the bank surrounding the marshes on the Blakeney road broke, releasing the water from our part of the village for a few seconds, flooding Newgate, Wiveton and Glandford (hence the drop in depth, pre¬viously mentioned) and then it surged into the street like the sea, breaking down and tearing open doors and windows. There were four of us-my sister, Mr. Lown (an elderly gentleman who worked part-time for us), Charlie and myself. When we realised how serious it had become, and saw from the showroom window the enormous waves tearing by, we climbed on the drapery counter, which was the highest, taking eight large biscuit tins with us, on which to stand if the water rose above the counter, which it soon did.

"We had rescued and lit two candles, which was fortunate, as all lights went out. Luckily for us, there was a row of cot blankets on display above the counter. We wrapped these around ourselves and managed to keep reasonably warm. For four hours, we stood watching the stock gradually sink into the water - a bag of sugar which had been raised onto a chair - quaker oats, soap powder – eggs – apples - biscuits-anything that would float found its way into the middle of the shop, which was like a boiling cauldron. Miss Dyball, an elderly lady who lived with us, had, we hoped, gone to the sitting room above the shop, and to let her know we were safe we periodically knocked on the ceiling with a saucepan, which was hung there for display. Gradually the water subsided, and about 10.30 p.m. Charlie got off the counter to see if we could get into the house. When he tried to open the door into the dining room next the shop, it was blocked by the sideboard, which was on its back and floated near the door. He somehow managed to push it away, nearly putting his foot in a tureen which had floated from the cupboard. Then he came back and lifted my sister and I in turn to the stairs, where we were received with open arms by Miss Dyball. She had not heard the saucepan knocking owing to the noise of the gale, and feared we had all been drowned. Fortunately we had taken coal upstairs as we were having friends in next day for my birthday so she had got a lovely fire going. How thankful we were for the cup of tea in a basin (we had no crockery upstairs then) and for soup in the same basin later that night! All three of us had to use the same one, but none of us minded: we were so thankful to be alive and warm.


"After we had got ourselves organised, about the third weekend after the flood, my brother and I went out one Sunday morning to see what had happened in other parts of the village. A cottage under the Hill opposite the marshes had had its front door ripped off and the wooden floor of the room had risen completely to the ceiling! But the most amazing thing was, the huge reed beds which had broken away and been forced by the water up the roadway. They must have weighed hundreds of tons, and one of them was washed up to the front of a friend's house, missing it by a few inches. It was a miracle the house escaped being knocked down. An astonishing thing was that the tiny birds which frequent the reeds were there as if nothing had happened! 

"Another thing that struck us was that our own yard looked full of bacon rinds. These proved to be earth worms, killed by the salt water.

“Many funny things happened to us as well.  For my birthday weekend I had been given a pheasant. My brother and I opened the cupboard in the larder where I had put it on the Saturday morning, and we just stood and roared with laughter! It was covered with black slimy mud. A parsnip which had lain on the floor of the larder had changed places with a dish of pears which had stood on the shelf. It had floated down, and the parsnip up. We could have eaten the pears as no mud had got into the dish.

"In our living room there was a cabinet of china standing on top of a large dresser almost reaching the ceiling. Both these went over backwards and we quite thought everything would be smashed. When my brother and I cleared the cabinet and washed the china (about 200 pieces) we found not one broken or even cracked. It was unbelievable and marvellous!

“Our friends had funny experiences too. Ada Allen, our neighbour, sat on her stairs and watched her teapot float round and round. She tried to grab it but the rush of water was too strong. Mr. Billy Holman and his son sat on their stairs and watched their coal scuttle go round and round the room and when eventually the water subsided, the coal scuttle had landed back in the right position exactly, near the hearth.

"Mrs. Holman was out and unable to get home. Mrs. Pashley, who was licensee of the Fishmongers' Arms and was very badly flooded indeed, found her tea which she kept in a yellow cooking bowl had floated to the top of a cupboard, caused a vacuum and stuck there. The tea was quite usable!

"Another friend, Miss Nellie West, who is a laundress, had a lot of her customers' laundry in the house at the time and of course, all was soaked with filthy black mud.With the help of a girl, Jean Large, she did her best to try and get them clean-a very difficult job with so little water. Like everyone else she had been given coal and wood so she had enormous fires to try and dry the things. After about ten days she missed one of her teapots, a bright aluminium one; after hunting about for it and deciding it had gone off with the tide she quite jokingly said to Jean "I wonder if it's up the chimney?" It was a large old-fashioned fireplace with a huge opening to the chimney-they looked up (for fun) and spied a bright spot peeping through the soot-they scraped the soot away and lor there was the lost teapot, no worse for its experience in spite of the roaring fires it had endured for ten days.

"Well, I guess that is about all I can say except to say thank you to all who helped us to get our lives back to normal again."

Everyone clapped and Freda looked very pleased as she retook her seat.