Madam, Did you know that, for barely the length of a cricket pitch, the main drain leaving Merrivale has been squeezed under the corner of an industrial estate building so as to reduce its capacity to less than 28 percent of what its designer intended?
This is a combined sewage and stormwater drain, and we know what he intended because he made it match the pipes coming in as soon as he got clear of the building, although it is harder to imagine why he didn't just go round. Perhaps he was forced into using an existing drain that was already built on.
But clearly our 'planners' in those days were just as good at causing floods as they are today.
K Horne, Gorsley