On the anniversary of the flooding of New Orleans I’m reminded of the time when Wellesbourne, just five miles from Stratford, was flooded in August 1968, especially where the old Peacock Inn used to stand.

Flooding had always been a problem for the ‘bottom end’ of the village, with the cellar of our house filling-up with evil smelling water several times a year. But on that August morning thirty-seven years ago the water kept on rising to ooze beneath the cellar door and into the living room.

It had been raining heavily all night and the usually tranquil River Dene (which helps feed the Avon) was, by early morning - due to the failure of several neglected sluice gates - a raging torrent. By first light most of Chapel Street was under water, with the Peacock Inn, in its vulnerable position at the river’s edge, resembling a torpedoed ship awaiting its end.

Not many in Wellesbourne today will remember the Peacock Inn, but those few that do will also recall the pub’s landlord, Teddy Dencer, with a wry smile.

Teddy had been the landlord since the early 1930s when the old place - a typical red brick three-storey building of the 1850s - had been the haunt of the men who worked on the farms, and the flour mill to the east of the village, and the workers of Pritchard’s coal yard next door. And although it was a working class boozer, it was also a favourite rendezvous for the Warwickshire Hunt.

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