“A CHASM now yawns through whose impassable jaws rolls the turgid and muddy flood,” said the D&S Times of July 28, 1888, reporting on a terrible flood in the Dales which had torn through Gunnerside bridge, in Swaledale.

The two pictures on this page are believed to show the aftermath of the flood at Forsdale, near Hawes. The outbuildings have been ripped away by the rampaging water.

“Forsdale is a hidden secret of Upper Wensleydale, where I was brought up,” says Katherine McCullum, who has sent in the photos. “If you drive from Hawes up the hill to the Buttertubs, you will see Forsdale to the west. The Tour de France used this route.”

Despite Katherine’s spelling, the Ordnance Survey maps refer to “Fossdale”. The dale feeds Hardraw Force, so it is clear where the name comes from, however it is spelled.

Photographed surveying the flood damage is John Sedgewick, whom the censuses of 1881, 1891 and 1901 record as farming 1,300 acres at Forsdale. In 1881, he was 44-years-old, and lived at Forsdale with his wife, Harriet, and their four daughters and one son, plus a 16-year-old niece, plus a 24-year-old male farm servant and a 19-year-old female domestic servant.

So the pictures could be from any flood within those 20 years.

Just as now, there were plenty of floods in John’s day - the 1888 report says that Gunnerside bridge had been partially washed away by the great flood of January 1883.

The 1888 flood came when a day of heavy summer rain climaxed in an explosive thunderstorm, where the lightning was so constant it almost blinded “the unfortunate wanderers” caught on Great Shunner Fell above Swaledale and Wensleydale. While the report doesn’t mention what happened that day in Forsdale and Wensleydale, it gives plenty of detail about how “at Gunnerside, the damage in the ghyll has been terrible - the beck having worked wild havoc with the adjoining land”.

It says that all the low-lying lands had been left covered by “sticky mud and sand which renders the grass useless as fodder and, of course, means utter ruin for the holders of the land.

“One farmer, pulling a long face, made the pessimistic remark: ‘I always notice that when there’s a good crop in the bottoms it is sure to be spoiled by a flood’.”

Some things never change.

If you can add anything to our little story of Forsdale, floods or the Sedgewicks, please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk.

Incidentally, Gunnerside bridge was first built in the 1830s by Edward Broderick of Spring End to create work for unemployed leadminers. It is a Grade II listed building, and its Historic England citation finishes: “The bridge was repeatedly rebuilt after being washed away by floods in the 19th Century.”