Volunteers work on flood management scheme at Mansers Shaw, Battle

Leaky dams are made of logs and twigs from nearby and are designed to slow the flow of water after heavy rain. They create pools and puddles upstream that help to ease the pressure of lots of water arriving suddenly at flood risk hot spots downstream. The streams in Mansers Shaw feed into Powdermill Stream that takes all of Battle’s rainwater down through Crowhurst where there can be flood problems for homes at the lowest points.

This is a joint venture between TCV The Conservation Volunteers and the High Weald National Landscape Partnership. About twenty community volunteers joined four sessions in the woods in February and March, where they learnt how to design leaky dams that would not get washed away and would hold up just a little bit of water each.

Lorna Neville is the TCV Sussex Team Leader. “What was especially lovely about this project, as well as the value of the leaky dams themselves, was seeing so many people turn up and get stuck in! Most of them were new to conservation volunteering and didn’t know anything about natural flood management, but their enthusiasm and enjoyment really showed. Even the mud did not put them off – and it was very muddy for the first few sessions! Thank you to everyone who came along.”

The tasks in Mansers Shaw have finished for now but TCV runs other local conservation volunteering sessions four or five days a week, including in Ninfield, Fairlight and various Hastings/Rother locations. For more information, see the website tcv.org.uk/southeast/sussex or find TCV Sussex on Facebook or email [email protected].

For more information about the High Weald National Landscape Partnership, see the website highweald.org.