The Ginge Brook
The Ginge rises at Betterton near the eponymous hamlet of Ginge in the shadows of the Ridgeway. through the Hendreds and Steventon before reaching the Thames at Sutton Courtenay.
Its name seems to derive from an old English word for ‘to turn aside’ and this does reflect the meandering path the brook takes. The stream has been used for watering cattle, watercress beds, a place for teaching children to swim and for powering mills.
Flooding
A downside of having the waterway going through the village is the constant risk of flooding. Many residents were affected in 2007 and through history floods have occurred regularly. The Parish Magazine relates that November 1894 will long be remembered as ‘the flood month’ and talks about a large river running through the streets and water ‘entering under doorways without knocking’. Mr and Mrs Gerring remembered a flood that was ‘as high as the bed of a farm wagon’ and another when ‘Mrs Thatcher had to be rescued from her cottage in Pugsden Lane’.
Ginge Brook flowing by Milton Lane footpath.
Navigating the Ginge
At the start of the 21st century three friends made the foolhardy decision to travel the length of the Ginge by coracle. That they actually started at Hill Farm in Steventon and two of them reached Sutton Courtenay makes the idea slightly more sensible but no more explicable
Droughts
In July 1890 in the Parish Magazine the Vicar asked villagers not to use water from the standpipes for anything except drinking or cooking. He warned that ‘all the Springs on Milton Hill won’t supply Steventonians if the water is used recklessly for washing etc’. A drought affected large parts of Britain in 1929 and during the summer the water supply to Steventon was only turned on for four hours in 48. This was the year when firemen struggled to fight the fire that destroyed five cottages. Before the mains water was installed there were wells, several standpipes around the village, including on the Little Green, outside Tudor House and in Castle Street, and a water carrier who would collect water from ponds and streams to deliver throughout the village.
Newspaper cutting from Daily Mirror 1929
