It is October 1909 and Rudyard Kipling, Britain’s first author to win the Nobel prize, is writing to his son, who is away at public school. Setting pen to paper at Bateman’s, his home in Burwash, Sussex, Kipling said: “Dear old man. It has been a gay and hectic week. When I left my father’s house on Tuesday at 10am it was raining awfully, and it never stopped for an instant all the way.
“One hundred and twenty-eight miles of motoring in a downpour that wetted everything to the skin. The motor came back to Bateman’s one solid clot of mud. Well! That was only the beginning of the fun! I had an idea we should have a bit of a flood in the valley but I had no notion we should have the worst flood since 1852!”
By 8pm that night, the nearby brook at Burwash had burst over its banks. By 9pm the property’s pond had backed up over the lower lawn.
According to the book O Beloved Kids: Rudyard Kipling’s Letters to His Children (edited by Elliot L Gilbert, Zenith 1984), the author’s news continued: “By midnight the water was at the south door of Bateman’s – lying in one level sheet right across the garden. It was very odd to see only half the yew hedges sticking up in the moonlight. At 1 o’clock I went into the kitchen to get something to eat.
“I opened the cellar door and this is what I saw! Bottles and eggs and apples floating about in a foot of water. Well, it didn’t seem much good hanging about so we went to bed, and in the morning the water had gone off the lawns and we put on our rubber boots and began to take stock of the damage.”
