Flooding forces pub to close (From Gazette Series)

Flooding forces pub to close

TORRENTIAL rain forced a pub in Wotton-under-Edge to close its doors to customers on Tuesday night.

Following a deluge of rain the cellar at the White Lion, in Long Street, was flooded after a sewer system behind building was unable to cope with the volume of rain water.

Firefighters from the town spent nearly an hour and a half pumping water out of the building.

Aubrey Wood, who has been landlord at the pub for eight years, said: "There is quite a bit of damage at the pub. I don't know how the sewer system works but it just overflowed. It is the second time that this has happened in eight years.

"The cellar was under 18 inches of water and it affected the cooling system and electrics. It has also damaged a lot of the stock.

"It happened at about 10.00pm so there were still people in the pub and I had to close the doors and start moving people on because of the damage.

"I would like to thank the fire brigade because they did such a fantastic job."

It is not yet know how much the flood damage has cost and Mr Wood said he was unable to make an estimation at such an early stage.

He continued: "We are still working it out and we are waiting for people to come back to us. The electric company have been out and they have made a report and they are going to be looking into the problem.

"But until people have reported back to us and we know what caused the problem it is all up in the air."

The pub was re-opened to customers by Wednesday lunchtime.

The Yew Tree at Cam had a lucky escape from being flooded after drinkers rallied together to prevent a repeat of flooding six weeks ago.

Landlord Christian Farmer said: "We were nearly flooded again but the locals went out and cleared the drains and put sandbags out. The water came within half an inch of flooding the pub.

"We had only been open for four days following the refurbishment we had to do following the hailstorms six weeks ago."