Peter Freeman, Insurance Agent during Canvey Island Flood.

I couldn't get on the Island for six weeks

Photograph taken by Gilbert Wines – Looking over Benfleet Creek towards the flooded Canvey Island the morning of the floods.

For Peter’s musical memories click here

School boy memories of Benfleet.

Plane crash on Pitsea Marshes

Canvey island Floods
Details of insurance area covered, estates built on Canvey Island, the view from the Benfleet Downs, I couldn't get on the Island for six weeks, longer lasting effects. 6mins

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  • That’s how I remember my first sight of the floods. We lived in St Mary’s Rd, with an add-on with big windows at the back of the house and it was from those that I saw the floods. My parents had two pharmacies on Canvey, so when I woke them to tell them what had happened my father was up and out in a flash.

    Later that day I walked onto the Island to see if I could help, and I can still see my father staring out at the floodwater where Furtherwick Park school would later be built. I think he thought at the time that all his wife had worked for since she’d opened the pharmacy in 1933 would be ruined.

    Turned out that it wasn’t of course and within a day or two my mother and Norman Penny, the other pharmacist in the company, had opened a temporary pharmacy in the refuge centre in what is now King John School.

    By Miall James (20/04/2019)

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