The future of a popular village pub looks uncertain after it was hit by floods again yesterday.

Paula Webley, the owner of Corston’s Radnor Arms, says she was devastated to see the pub flooded for the second time in three weeks.

The free house, which is owned by Paula and her husband Andrew, was hit by a flash flood on Sunday November 4 causing damage throughout the building.

They have been married for 20 years. They bought the pub as their first venture together and they live there with their two teenage sons Connor and Mark.

The pub had just reopened two-and-a-half weeks ago after closing at the end of August and it was only a year since the couple had spent £40,000 on refurbishments.

Despite this Mrs Webley remained positive and was hoping to re-open within a week. To get the pub ready again she had the heating on every day, but once again her plans were disrupted by the weather.

Yesterday she had carpet fitters at the pub when she noticed the cellar was flooded and had to call the fire brigade.

The fire brigade attempted to get water out of the pub, but all the water was bubbling up through the drains and there was nowhere to pump the water to.

In the afternoon the Highways Agency arrived with a lorry to suck up the water instead.

Mrs Webley said the water was coming from the outside and from the cellar. It was running off the surrounding fields and also bubbling up from a sump in the cellar, which is a hole where excess water can be poured.

Although the main area is mainly sorted, the cellar is still 12 to 14 inches deep in water.

She said: “It’s worse than last time. I stopped them doing the underlay to the floor, but this time it was about four to five inches deep because there wasn’t any carpet to soak it. This time even our barn at the end of the pub has flooded.

“The thing is I don’t want to open again because I know it’s going to happen again. I’m really down about it now because I can’t see a solution, there are forecasts of heavy rain again. Until there is a solution for this problem of flooding I can’t go on with it.

“The villagers have been phoning to see if there’s anything they can do, but unfortunately there’s nothing we can do.”
Elsewhere the River Marden burst its banks in the centre of Calne.

Simon Shelley, 59, of Quarrydale Close, Calne, said: “It’s one of the highest but it’s not drastically high at the moment, I don’t think it will get higher.
“What you see in place there is all quite artificial.

“When the bacon factory was there in Calne all the buildings that used to be flooded in Calne were demolished. You wouldn’t have seen the river because it was underneath the bacon factory, but when the factory was knocked down they restored it.”