One of Britain's best-loved landscapes may be subtly reshaped over the next decade in a long-term attempt to ease the risk of catastrophic floods.
Millions of pounds worth of damage in Cumbria last year has prompted local planning bodies and the Environment Agency to consider restoring meanders, flood meadows and long-lost plantations in the valleys of the Lake District.
The strategy would be to "slow down" cascades of rainfall from the Pennine chain and Cumbrian fells such as those which led to Devastation at bottlenecks in the region's rivers. especially in Keswick, Workington and Cockermoth
Record downpours last year saw the 5.6 square miles of Windermere rise over eight feet, drowning scores of properties and crushing craft into boathouse roofs, including one of the country's most historic steam launches, the Shamrock.
But even the size of the lake, England's largest, failed to act as an effective brake on floodwater which swept on into the river Leven, inundating homes and hotels below the outlet weir at Newby Bridge.
The slowdown approach will aim to calm the process by restoring a pre-Victorian pattern of winding watercourses, alongside existing work on blocking fellside drainage "grips".
These open channels, cut through absorbent peat moors in the 1960s, were designed to improve "sterile" land, but are now seen as saboteurs of a vast natural sponge. The November 2009 deluge caused flooding as high up as Scales on the slopes of Blencathra fell, where the White Horse pub was filled as deep as a swimming pool.
"It just came in from the back like a huge waterfall," said chef Sean Hughes, who watched the water rise above the bar. Only two weeks ago, similar rapid runoff saw Derwentwater's two square miles rise within hours, triggering evacuation alerts at Keswick's fully booked caravan and campsite by the Derwent – the river which ransacked Cockermouth last year.
"Rivers were straightened and often diverted to one side of their valleys to increase farmland," said Glyn Vaughan, the area's flood risk and coastal manager of the Environment Agency, who has supervised a multi-million repair and extension of flood defences since last November. "We hope to recover water meadows and extend the flood plain, away from settlements, as well as restoring the original, natural meander of the rivers."
Local support for action is vigorous, with any prolonged period of rainfall causing widespread anxiety since the 2009 floods. Although the 314mm in 24 hours at Seathwaite – England's wettest place – on 19/20 November last year was a "1000-year event", it came only a year after previous heavy flooding in the Lakes, and four years after £400m damage was done by the river Eden to Carlisle.
Councillor Eddie Martin, Labour leader of Cumbria county council, said the recovery had been remarkable: "The Cumbrian spirit has triumphed. The county has bounced back from its biggest natural disaster in recent memory. It has not been easy. It has taken a gargantuan effort to rebuild communities, restore services and repair most of the wreckage wrought."
But even as the damage is repaired it has left behind a deep-seated anxiety. "People are nervous when it rains now," said Jo Bell, manager of the community centre on Workington's Northside estate, which was marooned from the main part of town when every bridge except the rail crossing was destroyed or made impassable last year. Less than three miles away in the industrial coastal village of Flimby, Rita Hogarth and her husband, a retired steelworker, missed flooding by two inches only 10 days ago.
"We were washing up dinner and the sink wouldn't empty," she said. "We couldn't understand it until we looked outside and saw the garden had turned into a lake." On the other side of the Lake District, at Eamont Bridge near Penrith, Jan Falshaw watched anxiously to see if the two local rivers, the Lowther and the Eamont, would play their usual trick of rising, respectively, into the cellars and up the gardens of the row of cottages by the bridge.
Both places are vulnerable to "river rush". At Flimby, Rose's neighbours Sandra and Peter Myers said: "They haven't looked after the beck at Barrel Arch and it poured down here, bringing loads of debris which blocked our drains." Above Eamont Bridge, Penrith's old swimming pool in the Eamont, with its diving boards and changing huts, has gone, and with it the weir which helped hold water back.
Flood defence work, including cellar pumps and portable barriers for part of Cockermouth and 35 particularly vulnerable houses at Eamont Bridge, have meanwhile been finished before the expected effect of public spending cuts.
"We have spent over £3m more than our original budget for the last year," said Vaughan, who also saw Carlisle's new £38m defences completed this month, a year ahead of schedule. But he and his colleagues, like all the local councils and the Lake District national park, are braced for next April when the comprehensive spending review will bite.
The Environment Agency is due for a 26% cut, or £128m less to spend. The group's attitude is: "We'll just have to manage it" – a process in which the recreation of traditional river and moorland drainage management, more gradual than costly embanking and similar "fortification", is likely to play a part.
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