The Sid Valley, like any valley, will have many so-called ‘ghost streams’ running through it.
Also known as ghost waters or ephemeral streams, these are“features that only flow in direct response to precipitation events”.
IN TOWN
In urban or potentially urban areas, such ghost waters can kill your land development of course, as streams, wetlands, floodplains, tributaries, ditches, hydric soils, and other areas that are dry much of the year but collect water during precipitation events or snowmelt… “can drastically alter the ecological implications of any given piece of land”.
The point for Sidmouth, as with most urban areas, is that such ghost streams are normally buried underground as pipes – but their impact on your health is very real:
Across the country, buried beneath the pavement you walk on, an invisible network of waterways flows through the darkness. These are ghost streams, and they’re haunting us.
In their former lives, they wound through natural landscapes above ground; it’s only through decades of development that humanity has relegated them beneath the earth’s surface, enclosing the waterways in tombs of concrete and iron. The effects, decades later, plague us. Without a natural habitat to snake through, these streams carry downstream an excessive amount of pollutants (like salt and sediment) and nutrients (like nitrogen and phosphorus) because they can’t divest these materials into their surrounding environs.
And indeed, recent flooding in towns and cities show how ghost streams and redlining’s legacy can lead to unfairness in flood risk, in Detroit and elsewhere. But whereas, when it comes to the Valencia floods, our warming climate is making once-rare weather more common, and more destructive – civil engineers would naturally claim that engineering solutions could have saved lives.
But ‘over-engineering’, or hard-engineering’ might be a thing of the past, as even here in Sidmouth we can look to natural and low-impact infrastructure along the Sid. Perhaps, then, we need to be investing in green infrastructure.
When it comes to flooding in Sidmouth, the Woolbrook, a tributary to the Sid, is buried under much of Woolbrook Road. This brook is not a ‘ghost stream’ in the strictest meaning of that term, but it’s clear that the infrastructure to take the waters is not enough and has contributed to the flooding issues in Sidmouth – and so roads become rivers, and it’s not going to get much better any time soon…
OUT IN THE COUNTRY
When it comes to ghost streams beyond the urban build up and tarmac, there will be many a ghost of a stream appearing, as one tramps across certain fields or through woods on very wet days in the Sid Valley, as old water courses find their way again.
As a demonstration, one could take a tramp through Farrantshayes Farm – twenty minutes from the beach at Sidmouth: “We are in the middle tier of the Countryside Stewardship programme, with a focus on natural grassland and hedgerow management…”
As reported by the Devon Wildlife Trust on a little video on Facebook, posted this week, on land located at Farrantshayes Farm in East Devon, a great change has taken place. For the first time in approximately 200 years, a stream is once again flowing into what were ‘ghost stream’ areas, creating a connected wetland habitat!
Here’s more on YouTube from May last year: bringing back Devon’s ghost streams:

How do you create a ‘working wetland’? On a farm in East Devon, ‘ghost streams’ appear on the land when it rains, showing where the river once flowed. Devon Wildlife Trust is working with the landowner to re-connect the land to its ‘watery roots’, and create natural features to slow the flow of water. Over time, this wet field will transform into a wetland, creating places for dragonflies, frogs, waterbirds and other wildlife to live and thrive. In the winter, this space can help reduce downstream flooding. In the summer, it could provide a vital water source in times of drought. This wetland creation has been made possible thanks to the landowner and support from North Devon Biosphere through the Devon Woods project.
The DWT has invested in the long-term Working Wetlands & Upstream Thinking project. So the Farrantshayes wetland will be part of its focus on the River Otter – as part of this upstream thinking on Devon’s rivers.
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