Though Bideford housewives manage a smile in adverse circumstances.

People who live on the surrounding hills, and those who meet complacently at the dry Castle, Exeter, where the Devon County Council have their meetings, in duty bound should pause to consider the plight of some scores of householders in the lower portions of Bideford Borough.

Yet again this winter, housewives of Chanters Lane have awakened to find all their ground floor rooms flooded by water, not in the normal way from outside, but from inside, forced up through the drains and sinks by the laws of nature. The houses shown above were built long before Devon County Council built Kingsley Road, which helps to pond up the water brought down from Kenwith Valley, part of which lies in Northam and takes the stream from Buckleigh area, and part in the Rural District, and these Bideford householders are paying the price in health and sheer financial loss and dismay.

The full Gazette article dated 21 January 1955