HOLMEBRIDGE

Leaving Bank End Mill, the valley commences to widen until it reaches Holmebridge, and the water, therefore, was spread over a much greater surface, but left sad evidences of the ravaging velocity from which it was swept along. 

Image produced from the www.old-maps.co.uk service with permission of Landmark Information Group Ltd. and Ordnance Survey

The stream at Holmebridge was crossed by a bridge of one arch, about thirty yards to the east of which stands the church of St. David’s, which has been erected only a few years before the flood.

The church steeple faces up the stream and stood about the centre of the graveyard. 

On the Cartworth side of the river stood a toll-bar and a number of dwellinghouses. 

HOLMEBRIDGE CHURCH AND GRAVEYARD

The foundations of the bridge were washed completely bare, and the stream flowing from Bilberry Reservoir for some weeks after the flood passed through a large opening washed away in the road outside of the bridge, which was about ten yards wide, ten feet deep, and had to be crossed by a plank. 

The wall surrounding the church was washed away by the current, and the few trees planted in the yard were uprooted and carried down the stream. 

THE RIVER HOLME AT HOLMEBRIDGE

The interior of the church and the graveyard presented a most awful spectacle. 

Inside the church the water rose to about five feet.  The floor was torn up, some of the pews were lifted bodily and floated in the water, and the floor was covered with sand and mud several inches thick; cushions, prayer books, etc., were washed away in great numbers. 

A goat, which had previously been seen feeding in the graveyard, was found dead in the middle aisle of the church, having been washed their by the flood, which stove in the church doors.