Rarely from rivers or the sea, but rain is another matter. No postcode here sits in the river or sea flood zones. A minority of postcodes carry a high rating on at least one flood measure. The coast is a few kilometres away, with defences planned for decades. In Icklesham the water to worry about falls from the sky.
On the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood mapping, none of Icklesham's postcodes fall in flood zone 3, the higher-probability band, and none in flood zone 2, the medium-probability band beyond it. For a village with this much marsh history around it, that's the result a buyer hopes for. It covers rivers and the sea only.
Surface water is a separate risk. It comes from heavy rain that the ground and drains can't take quickly enough, and the river-and-sea zones don't measure it. Here it is folded into the postcode-level ratings, which are the figures to check for any particular street.
For a longer view, the Environment Agency also models a flood zone that allows for climate change. None of Icklesham's postcodes fall inside it, so even on that forward-looking estimate, the rivers and the sea stay off the doorstep.
For insurance, a home outside the river-and-sea zones usually gets cover on ordinary terms. A property on one of the postcodes rated high for surface water can still face questions or a higher premium. Get a quote on the exact address before you instruct a solicitor, not after you've agreed a price.
At postcode level, about 10% of Icklesham's postcodes are rated high on at least one flood measure, 5% medium and 29% low. Those measures include surface water alongside rivers and sea. They overlap with the flood-zone figures above rather than adding to them, and a postcode appears in the band of whichever single measure scores worst. So most postcodes carry no rating at all, and the few rated high need looking at street by street.
On defences, the Environment Agency's modelled flood extents put 0% of postcodes in the high-risk undefended area and 0% in the high-risk defended area. In the model, no postcode here relies on a defence to stay out of the high-risk extent. Where a model does mark an area as defended, that only means a defence exists in the model. It never means a house is safe.
The coast is about 3.3 kilometres away for a typical postcode here. The shoreline management plan for this stretch is to hold the line over the next 20 and 50 years, meaning a stated intention to keep the existing defences. Over 100 years it moves to managed realignment, meaning the line may be allowed to shift in a controlled way. A plan is an intention, not a guarantee, and it doesn't build any defences today.
The nearest long-running tide gauge, at Dover, recorded sea level rising by about 2.2 millimetres a year across its record from 1961 to 2010. That is a measured historic rate, not a forecast.
None of Icklesham's area appears in the records of past flooding. That is genuinely reassuring, but it only means no flood has been recorded here, not that none has ever happened.
Overall, Icklesham's flood risk is middling rather than alarming. The rivers and the sea stay out of the picture, but the surface-water ratings on a minority of postcodes mean the exact address matters more than the village name.