SIR — I would like to question the accuracy of the caption, however well-meaning it was, under the photograph of Tarr Steps accompanying your report 'The serious cost of floods on Exmoor' (Free Press January 11).

Anne Beveridge writes "No big machinery to help them in those days just iron bar and muscle power", but I would like to refer her to the archive film, now available as a CD, 'Dulverton Bygone Times'.

In it she would see the army, the Royal Engineers, in September 1949, being involved with a crane on a lorry replacing the stones.

These were dislodged and swept downstream on February 27 1940 by large chunks of ice, some as big as twelve feet by eight feet by eight and a half inches thick, in the thaw following a big freeze-up.

My grandfather Sidney Heywood was able to walk from Hinham Farm across the river Barle to go to a nap party at Draydon Farm at the time.

Also, my father Hector told me that the weight of ice on the branches of trees would cause them to snap off at any time, causing a sound like gunshot to roll around the valley.

The archive film does mention that many temporary repairs were carried out between 1940 and 1949 and whilst the 1949 repairs were on-going the army provided what looks to be a Bailey bridge for people to walk across.

The Royal Engineers again helped to rebuild the clapper bridge after the 1952 floods, using, I was told, the photographs of Alfred Vowles for guidance and accuracy, although some of the stones had been numbered in 1949.

I cannot be sure but I think the army also provided a Bailey bridge as they done before.

One thing that strikes me from the photograph with the men standing in the river was how much higher the top stones appear relative to the river bed than of late.

The whole issue of how the river valley has been managed must now be addressed.

Historically, according to 87-year-old Tom Lock from Hawkridge, the riparian owners used to employ people for "cutting back the water staves" ie clearing young trees, overhanging branches, bushes etc on the river banks that would interfere with casting fly lines in fishing.

This no longer happens, in fact the very opposite.

I was able three years ago to show a county councillor the mature trees below the bottom of Hinham Lane that had fallen into the river but were still attached to their roots and growing.

I was told that this was now the policy of the Environment Agency, to leave such trees to slow the flow of water for continuity of supply for abstraction lower down the river.

Any fool with a little imagination ought to have been able to visualize that given another large flood these trees would be washed away in the surge of floodwater to block up a bridge lower down the river.

What happened at Dulverton Bridge? What happened to the weir above it? What happened to the wire hawser barring above Tarr Steps? Look at Thornton's Bridge just above where the Danesbrook joins the Barle at Castle Bridge.

Memories are very short, or are new people in control who think they know the answers; for the answers are there on film taken 61 years ago this August for all to see. Dulverton Bridge was choked with trees and branches just as in the recent floods.

Somebody must be held to account, or perhaps these days it will be a committee.

Finally, whilst still in the Barle Valley, what has driven people to direct that good mature beech trees be indiscriminately felled and abandoned amongst the oak? Perish the thought that the sudden oak death or any other disease would strike; there would be no trees of consequence left at all.

Cllr Bruce Heywood,

Dulverton and District Ward,

West Somerset Council.