2023 comes in with a splash! Chitterne is no stranger to flooding, our last big one was in January 2014, in the very same week in fact. Early January was a popular time for the springs to appear in 1995, 1998, 2000 and 2003. Usually they come up and go down again causing no trouble, but every so often…they don’t, as in 2014.
I described the reason why Chitterne is susceptible to springs popping up occasionally in a blog back in 2014. This was before I started blogging on WordPress. To read that blog go to http://www.suerobinson.me.uk and click on Old Blog, January 2014.
This January the water table has been fickle. Water first appeared in our garden on the 4th January, on the 6th the water level was higher, on the 9th it started going down, the garden was dry on the 11th. On the 14th it came back up again much faster!
On the 16th the temperature dropped overnight to -7C, and the water level increased leading to some interesting effects from the traffic splashing through the flooded roads.
All the spring water draining from the village into the Chitterne Brook rushes headlong toward the meadows on the outskirts, swelling and overflowing the banks on its way to Codford to join the River Wylye.
After a week of mostly freezing temperatures overnight, and no rainfall, the spring water started to recede. Several houses suffered water indoors but we came off lightly compared to 2014. The Cut in the village did not overflow as it had in 2014. Since that time the local council have made strenuous efforts to keep the Cut free of obstruction, and laid in stores of sand bagging materials. We live and learn.
To finish here are two photographs of past floods in the village.
Chitterne Now and Then 
Interested in Ashley family ,my Mother’s family lived there Ivy was born and Married in Village attending village school ,
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I will email you Alan
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