THIS intrepid girl wading along Bradford Road offers some idea of the depth of floods at Stockbridge on September 20, 1946.

It followed a night and day of rain “as heavy as had been experienced for 30 years” causing the River Worth to burst its banks below Dalton Lane and overflow at its confluence with the River Aire.

“A few buses managed to get through, with the passengers standing on the seats,” the Keighley News laconically remarked, “but even this was later found to be impracticable” after two lorries and the Riddlesden bus became marooned in the waters. Traffic was diverted via Harden and Cullingworth.

When this photograph first appeared in Memory Lane nearly a quarter of a century ago, retired conductress, Olive McKerrow, recalled that the bus seen here had been driven by Tommy Blackie, with Miss May Tonkin conducting.

“Word came into the canteen”, she wrote, “that Tommy had rescued May by pulling her through a side window in the bus and giving her a piggy-back to dry land.”

The Keighley division of the National Fire Service subsequently pumped an estimated 3,600,000 gallons of water out of mills and houses during the worst of the flooding.