OWNERS of a Thurrock riding stables have spoken of their shock as unprecedented floodwaters rose to cover their grounds and into stables, forcing them to move horses into emergency barns.

The drama played out at Well Lane Stables in North Stifford out over the past couple of days as the waters of the Mardyke river burst its banks and then swamped its floodplain.

Like the leaders of Thurrock Scouts just a few hundred yards downstream whose newly decorated premises at the Cherrywood camp site were also flooded, Tracy and Kieron White could do nothing the stop the flow of water which appears to have been caused by a significant failure of the Environment Agency's sluice adjacent to the river Thames in Purfleet.

Engineers at the sluice confirmed its main barrier has malfunctioned and could not be raised, forcing water to back up all along the Mardyke Valley as far back as Bulphan where some local homes also found themselves under threat from floodwater.

Mr White says that the waters that have swamped the stables came out of the blue.

"We have had flooding before, but never anything like this. I have got 17 horses down here and the flooding has got into the stables, flooded my field and ruined the fences. It's going to cost us a lot of money to put it right. I will be interested to see if the Environment Agency will compensate me for the damage that has been caused.

"I have lived here 21 years and I have never, ever seen anything like this. This is really bad. The problem is the sluice gate. If it had been working properly this wouldn't have happened."

While the stables appear to have emerged relatively unscathed in terms of physical damage and they will dry out, the big problems for the stables is the extensive flooding of the adjacent areas where the horses exercise and riders school their horses.

A system of small arenas has been created with fences and special surfacing. Known as menages, the areas feature surface dressing of a specialist nature which is usually a combination of Silica sand with rubber or fibre - which has now been ruined and will cost thousands to replace.

"This is not an act of God," said Kieran. "It happened without warning, which we should have had, and it could have been prevented. You have to wonder who is in charge and what they think about people like ourselves. Do we matter?"

A busy Sunday. Thurrock Nub News at the heart of flood matters on the Mardyke Valley: View a summary of our video reports here.