Yes. Bourton-on-the-Water carries a real flood risk, and it is the village's biggest weakness. Close to a third of its postcodes are flagged high on at least one flood measure. About one in seven is in the highest river flood zone. The Windrush runs through the middle of the village, and the water has come into the streets before. Anyone buying here needs to take the river as seriously as the people who insure it do.
On the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood maps, about 14% of the area's postcodes are in Flood Zone 3, the highest-probability band, and a further 11% are in Zone 2, the medium-probability fringe outside it. The two bands do not overlap, so a postcode in Zone 2 is one step further from the river than one in Zone 3. A village laid out along a river on a wide flat vale was always going to have its risk run down the middle of the high street.
Not all of the water comes from the river. The Environment Agency has 17 recorded flood events here, and about 12% of the area falls within a recorded historic flood outline. The most recent event, in July 2007, involved the main river but was put down to local drainage and surface water. When the drains cannot cope, the river does not need to break its banks for the water to arrive.
The Environment Agency's climate-adjusted version of the river-and-sea zones covers about 25% of the area's postcodes. That is the modelled extent with an allowance for wetter conditions to come, and it reaches further from the Windrush than today's zones do.
For insurance, cover is usually available, but premiums and excesses on the lower streets can look very different from those a few hundred metres uphill. It makes sense to get a buildings insurance quote on the exact address while the survey is being booked, because the quote reflects that street's mapping and the village average does not.
Count every measure together, surface water included alongside rivers and sea, and about 30% of Bourton's postcodes come out high risk on at least one of them, 27% medium on at least one, and half low on at least one. A postcode only needs to trip one of several measures to be counted, which is why these shares run higher than the flood zones alone.
In terms of homes, the Environment Agency's rivers-and-sea mapping lists 818 properties in the postcodes that carry any risk at all: 104 at high risk, 60 at medium, 174 at low and 36 at very low. Postcodes with no risk on that map are left off the list entirely, so the 818 is the at-risk part of the village and the rest is excluded.
On the question of defences, about 13% of postcodes are inside the high-risk modelled flood extent without defences, and about 13% are inside it with defences included. In the Environment Agency's model, then, whatever defences exist do not change the high-risk share at all. "Defended" in this model only means a defence appears in it, and here it barely matters on the map.
The nearest tide gauge is at Portsmouth, where sea level rose by about 2 millimetres a year over the 1962 to 2023 record. Bourton is a very long way from the coast. The water that matters here comes down the Windrush, and the sea level is somebody else's problem.
Flood risk is Bourton-on-the-Water's poorest point by some distance. On the lower streets, the flood mapping deserves as much attention as the floor plan.