Great Sheffield Flood

The Great Sheffield Flood, also known as the Great Inundation, was a flood that devastated parts of Sheffield, England, on 11 March 1864, when the Dale Dyke Dam broke.

New Dam wall collapsed during filling

The newly-built dam, at Low Bradfield on the River Loxley, broke while it was being filled for the first time. An estimated 3 million m³ (700 million imperial gallons) of water swept down the Loxley valley, through Loxley village and on to Malin Bridge and Hillsborough, where the Loxley joins the Don. The flood continued south down the Don into Sheffield centre, around the eastward bend of the Don at Lady's Bridge, then to Attercliffe, past the sites of today's Don Valley Stadium, Sheffield Arena, and Meadowhall Shopping Centre, and on to Rotherham.

The subsequent enquiry found that the flood had wrecked nearly every bridge as far as Lady’s Bridge, destroyed 800 houses, and killed 270 people - bodies were later found as far down the Don as Mexborough. The conclusion was that the dam construction was defective, and that a small leak in the wall grew rapidly until the dam failed completely.

The claims for damages formed one of the largest insurance claims of the Victorian period.

ee also

*Floods in Sheffield 2007
*List of natural disasters in the United Kingdom

External links

* [http://mick-armitage.staff.shef.ac.uk/sheffield/flood.html#index Great Flood at Sheffield 1864]
* [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mossvalley/mv2/sheffield-flood.html Newspaper article from 1864]
*http://www.shef.ac.uk/misc/personal/cs1ma/flood/flood.html
*http://extra.shu.ac.uk/sfca/
* [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~engsheffield/k_lightowler/a_lightowler.htm Victims of the Sheffield Flood]
* [http://www2.shu.ac.uk/sfca/ Sheffield Flood - insurance claims archive]
* [http://www.theforgottenflood.com "The Forgotten Flood", Documentary Film about the flood]