THE THAMES Flood Barrier was slammed shut today to defend London in the wake of torrential rains and melting snow.


Popular on LondonNet


Closed an average of only four times a year, the barrier has kept London dry for a quarter of a century, but even with the gates shut, some small flooding is expected at various points during high tides over the next few days.

Two areas under some threat of overflow are reckoned to be the stretches of the Thames between Putney Bridge and Teddington in the west of London and from Loughton to Barking in the east.

Officially, the Environment Agency have graded the present danger as a “flood watch”, which is just below “flood warning” in the watery disaster stakes.

But the good news is that the barrier works and is one of our city’s great engineering icons. Despite fears that it is quickly becoming obsolete due to global warming and rising sea levels, experts predict it will last until at least 2070, the date planned for when it was built in the 1980s.

The Thames Barrier Information Centre is well worth a visit and there’s a lovely park with great river estuary views nearby, too.