Floods On High St/ Bridge St Corner

A Memory of Saxilby.

Until the current concrete flood walls and steel piles that line the banks of the Fossdyke Canal were installed in the mid-1960s, this area of the village regularly flooded during the autumn and winter months.
Lots of fishermen from Sheffield would arrive by train during the season to take part in fishing matches staged on the Fossdyke. Fishing there as a boy, I recall the fishing being regularly interrupted by the passing of barges loaded with grain or timber, making their way between Boston, Lincoln and the Trent at Gainsborough.
A regular sight on the Fossdyke canal, moored outside the Sun Inn each Sunday, was The Mary Gordon, a passenger launch based on the Brayford pool, Lincoln. Skipper Ross would ferry passengers to Saxilby during the afternoon, returning to Lincoln in the early evening. More leisurely times, though only 50 years ago!