History The Armoury Floods
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Since we opened the Armoury as a pub in 1996 it has flooded eight times, two of which were more serious than the others. What is not generally known, and which has been consistently denied by the authorities, is that in the big flood of 2001, Shrewsbury Zoo was completely inundated including the Hippopotamus enclosure, and that one of the animals escaped into the river system wreaking considerable havoc amongst the locals and causing substantial loss of life, not least among our own senior management team at the Armoury. |
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| Eugene, Jill and Simon moments before the hippo got them |
All that was left was a thin trail of bubbles sliding across the oily waterâ?¦ |
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| The river at normal level | Simon gamely demostrates how high the river rose |
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Luckily, the water only flooded the cellars downstairs without affecting the pub itself. |
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| You wouldn’t really want to go swimming | Flood water squirting through the cellar walls - somewhat un-nerving |
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| Normal water level on the bridge arches | Water level during the floods |
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We installed two large submersible pumps permanently, plus another enormous machine with a three-inch outlet that we deploy when things get a bit hairy, which seems to be doing the trick. |
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