Yes, and the climate-adjusted map makes the problem much bigger. A quarter of postcodes fall in the medium-risk river zone. A small slice is in the high-risk zone. Dozens of homes are rated high risk. Most of the village goes into the flood zone once climate change is added to the model. Thorpe was built on what the Thames left behind, and the Environment Agency has noticed.
In the Environment Agency's river-and-sea mapping, about 25% of Thorpe's postcodes are in flood zone 2 and about 5% in flood zone 3. The two zones are separate bands, with zone 3 the high-probability core and zone 2 the medium-probability fringe beyond it, so the quarter in zone 2 is in addition to the twentieth in zone 3. The village stands on thin alluvium over Thames gravel, between 14 and 20 metres above sea level, and that gravel is why the lakes are there at all.
The history is on file too. About 27% of postcodes fall within areas that have flooded before, and the Environment Agency holds 21 recorded flood events for the area, the latest in December 1968, when a main river overflowed a channel with no raised defences. Surface water has no figure of its own on this page, and it is counted only within the postcode indicators further down. Fifty-eight dry years is a long run, and the flood maps have not been persuaded by it.
The forward look is the uncomfortable part. Once the Environment Agency adds its allowance for climate change, about 84% of Thorpe's postcodes come inside the modelled flood zone. That is a projection from a model, but it is the projection lenders and insurers can read too.
For cover, that means the exact location of a house matters more than the village name. A home in zone 3 or with a flood history is likely to face more questions, higher premiums or an excess that takes some reading, and a home on slightly higher ground a few streets away may face none of that. Get an insurance quote on the specific address early, alongside the Environment Agency's long-term flood risk check for that property.
Across all of its flood indicators, surface water included, the Environment Agency rates about 9% of Thorpe's postcodes high on at least one measure, about 14% medium on at least one and about 47% low on at least one. These bands overlap with the river-and-sea zones above and with each other, so they cannot be added up. They show how far the risk reaches once rain falling on the ground is counted alongside the river.
Counted in properties, the picture is more concentrated. The Environment Agency's rivers-and-sea assessment lists 236 properties across the ten Thorpe postcodes that carry any risk, and 39 of them are rated high, 38 of those homes. None is rated medium and 80 are rated low. Postcodes with no risk do not appear in that list at all, so the 236 are the exposed part of the village, and most of Thorpe is outside it.
Defences make no visible difference to the worst case here. About 5% of postcodes are inside the high-risk extent with defences left out of the model, and the same 5% are inside it with defences included. A defence in the model is a feature on a map, and here the map draws the same line either way.
The nearest tide gauge in the record is at Portsmouth, where sea level rose by about 2 millimetres a year between 1962 and 2023. Thorpe is a long way from Portsmouth, and the water that matters here comes down the Thames, so the gauge is background and nothing more.
Flood risk is one of Thorpe's weaker points: concentrated in a few dozen homes today, with a climate-adjusted map that pulls in most of the village. Buyers who check the address carefully will mostly be fine, and the ones who skip the check are trusting the gravel.