Ron Levett's childhood memories, from the early 1930's, when he lived in the small village of Alfriston in Sussex

In my early years in Alfriston the Cuckmere River had a habit of producing very heavy flooding soon after Christmas and at times these floodwaters had been known to freeze over.

It was probably very dangerous but as boys we used to make slides on the ice. I believe that the high path beside the road opposite the new car park was built to allow pedestrians to reach the village when it was otherwise cut off by the high water.

When at last, it was decided to carry out remedial work on the river; I made my first acquaintance with the Ruston Bucyrus RB10 excavator. I believe there were three of these machines in total, using them in their dragline mode.

They extracted mud from the riverbed and piled it up to form flood banks on both sides of the river. New bridges had to be built both at Longbridge to carry the road to Litlington, and behind the church at Alfriston.

The new flood banks were built from the lock gates near Milton Street, all the way to the bridge at Litlington. My father secured a job driving a bulldozer building up the flood banks for the duration of the scheme. My friends and I had a wonderful time playing around the equipment when it was not in use.

Ron Levett, 2001