The
Ayton Lake of 1948
Newcomers to Ayton may not know that Ayton once had its very own
lake (or was it a loch?). It wasn’t for very long, but it was very
impressive indeed. This all happened during the period of great
rainfall and subsequent serious flooding in August 1948.
The lake formed behind the large railway embankment a mile or so
north of Prenderguest farm. The culvert under that embankment,
through which the Horn Burn flowed, collapsed and with no where else
to go, the swollen stream began to fill up the space behind.
At its biggest, the lake was 1½ miles long, over 40 feet deep and
contained over 4 million tons of water. There was a real fear that
the embankment would give way causing a huge rush of water to flow
down towards Ayton and Eyemouth. Indeed there was a contingency plan
to evacuate the Ayton should the ‘dam’ collapse, which at one point
looked highly likely. People travelled from all over to view this
temporary wonder. British Railways, who owned the embankment, had
the problem of releasing the vast volume of water and it proved a
very difficult and dangerous task. A sluice was cut into the
crumbling embankment to drain off the bulk of the water with the
remainder being pumped out.
If you stand at the bottom of Millerton Hill (the steep hill
between Hornburn House and Prenderguest and look towards the west
you can see the embankment that, in effect, became the dam wall. If
you are travelling on the train, you can see exactly where the lake
was as you cross the embankment.
If you want to know more about the Ayton lake there is a lot of
detail and some excellent photographs in Lawson Wood’s book ‘The
Great Borders Flood of 1948’ (Tempus Publishing – ISBN 0 7524 2756
3) published in 2000.
British Railways, which was relatively new at that time, also
produced a very informative film about the serious flooding on this
part of the east coat line and how it closed the line for several
weeks.
A copy of this film, now on DVD and lasting around 20 minutes can
be borrowed from Graham Dolan (018907 81411).
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