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Floods, St John's in the
Vale
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Account of a surprising Inundation in the Valley of
St John's near Keswick in Cumberland. (See Map
in this Mag.)
ON the 22d of August 1749, there was the most
terrible thunder, and incessant lightning, ever known in
that part in the memory of man, the preceding afternoon
having been extreme hot and sultry. The inhabitants of the
vale heard a strange buzzing noise, like the working of a
maltmill, or wind in the tops of trees, for two hours
together, before the breaking of the clouds, which was
accompanied by the water-fall. From the havock it made in so
short a time (for it was all over in less than two hours) it
must have far exceeded any thunder shower ever seen; most
probably it was a spout, or large body of water, which by
the lightning incessantly rarefying the air, broke at once
on the tops of the mountains, and so descended upon the
valley below, about three miles long, half a mile broad, and
lying nearly E. and W. closed in on the S. and N. side, with
prodigious high, steep, rocky mountains. Legburthet
Fells on the N. side had almost the whole cataract, and
the spout did not extend above a mile in length, and
swelling chiefly four small brooks; but to that amazing
degreee, that the greatest of them, called Catcheety
Gill, swept away a mill and a kiln in five minutes,
leaving the place where they stood covered with huge rocks
and rubbish, 3 or 4 yards deep; so that one of the mill
stones cannot be found. In the violence of the storm, the
mountain tumbled so fast down, as to choak up the old course
of this brook, the water forcing its way through shivery
rock, and now runs there in a chasm 4 yards wide, and
betwixt eight and nine deep. These brooks have lodged such
quantities of gravel and sand on their bordering meadows,
that they can never be recovered. Many vast pieces of rock
have been carried a considerable way into the fields, larger
than a team of ten horses can move; one of these measured
nineteen yards about. The damages alone to the grounds,
houses, highways, &c. are by some computed at 1000, by
others at 1500 pounds. One of the said brooks, called
Mose or Mosedale Beck, which rises near the
source of the others, but runs North from the other side of
Legburthet Fells, continues still foul and muddy,
probably from having worked its channel into some mineral
substance, which gives it the colour of water gushed from
lead mines, and is so strong as to tinge the river
Derwent, even at the sea, near twenty miles form
their meeting.
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I have not found a map in this volume of the magazine;
but -
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