THE COFFIN AND REMAINS OF A FULL GROWN MAN
Within a few feet of the goat, and resting on one of the
pew seats lay the coffin and remains of a full grown man which,
with others, had been washed up from their graves by the whirlpool
formed by the headlong current as it passed over the churchyard.
Immediately after the flood had subsided, the church yard
was to a great extent covered with broken machinery, pieces
of cloth, yarn, furniture, stones, hay and various other articles.
The gates of the toll house were lifted from their position
and swept along by the fury of the torrent, but the bar-house
itself escaped.
The houses of the inhabitants bordering upon the stream at
this point were inundated, their property either destroyed
or spoilt; and such was the quantity of mud and filth which
had accumulated in and about the dwellings that a most awful
stench was occasioned.
That the church itself was so little damaged comparatively
is due to the fact above stated – that the valley being at
this point much wider than it is above and a little below,
enabled the waters to spread over a greater surface.
The Rev. Eldred Woodhead, rector of St. Lawrence, Southampton,
and formerly vicar of Holmebridge, in a letter to the Leeds
Intelligencer, dated 7th February, alluding to
the unsafe state of the reservoir, says, “I would not build
my school low in the valley, as that unfinished work was always
regarded by me with fears and suspicion.”
 
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