Stow-on-the-Wold is about as hard for a river to reach as any town in the Cotswolds. None of it falls in the river-and-sea flood zones. No flooding is on record. A handful of postcodes carry some risk from heavy rain with nowhere to drain. The nearest river is down the hill at Lower Swell, and building on the hilltop was meant to keep things that way.
The Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zones cover none of Stow's postcodes. Zone 3, the highest-probability band, takes in 0%, and zone 2, the medium-probability fringe that lies beyond it, also takes in 0%. The River Dikler runs past Lower Swell, below the town, and the water stays down there.
Surface water is the one route by which flooding gets onto the hill. That happens when heavy rain arrives faster than drains and gutters can carry it away, and it depends on a street's dips and kerbs, so it can affect one stretch of road and miss the next. In Stow it applies to a minority of postcodes, and the figures for those are below.
The Environment Agency also publishes a version of its flood zones adjusted for climate change, and that version puts 0% of Stow's postcodes inside them. Even after the modellers have allowed for heavier rain, the hill still comes out with nothing.
For insurance, that should mean flood cover is an ordinary line on the quote for most homes in Stow. Insurers price by address, though, and a property on a postcode with a surface-water rating can still be asked more questions or charged a little more. A clean town-wide picture gets you a standard premium only if your own postcode is clean too.
The Environment Agency also rates each postcode across several measures, surface water included, and records the highest rating it gets on any of them. On that wider basis, about 3% of Stow's postcodes are rated high on at least one measure, about 6% medium and about 15% low. Look up the exact address on the Environment Agency's long-term flood risk service, because those few postcodes with a high rating are the ones a town-wide answer averages away.
The Environment Agency's modelled flood extents put 0% of Stow's postcodes in the high-risk zone with defences in place and 0% without. Nothing in the model is defending the town because nothing in the model is threatening it. Where a defence does appear in the model, that only means it was counted there, not that the homes behind it are safe. Stow never has to rely on that question.
The nearest tide gauge is at Portsmouth, where the sea rose by about 2 millimetres a year between 1962 and 2023. Portsmouth is the closest place that measures the sea, which tells you most of what you need to know about Stow's exposure to it.
The Environment Agency's historic flood map has no recorded flooding anywhere in Stow. That is good news, though the record covers only floods that someone measured and mapped, not every wet cellar there has ever been. Stow has been holding chartered fairs since 1330, and in all that time no flood has made it into the map.
Flood risk is one of Stow's genuine strengths. Rivers aren't the worry up here, and for most buyers the only thing worth checking is how one particular street copes with a downpour.