Days of rain had swollen the River Welland to bursting point and, with few of the effective flood relief works we enjoy today, in the early hours of Wednesday, July 2, 1958, the town's heart was under several feet of water.

Here, aided by reader's memories and, of course, that week's copy of the indispensible Harborough Mail, news editor Alex Blackwell takes a look back to that day, when quiet heroism and a sense of community helped the town get through one of its darkest hours...

NORMALLY full of bustling shoppers and people waiting for the bus, it's strange to think that exactly 50 years ago this month (July) Harborough's town square was submerged under five feet of water.

On Wednesday, July 2, 1958, the River Welland burst its banks after several days of rain and a particularly heavy downpour on Tuesday night.

It left The Square and many other parts of town under three to five feet of water and much of the town impassable.

The damage caused was estimated at thousands of pounds and it was billed as the worst of the century, eclipsing another notorious Harborough flood of 1955.

The 50-year anniversary prompted Mail reader Marjorie Simms, of Fairfax Road, to kindly send in a well-preserved copy of the famous Mail edition of July 3, 1958.

The front page bears the unforgettable image of the then Mail editor Ken Hankins and chief reporter Bob Hemingway standing next to the town's war memorial in floodwater up to their waists.

The image was used in many of the national newspapers and a copy hangs in the Mail's reception area.

Shopkeepers were badly hit, with stock ruined and some store windows being smashed under the pressure of what was described at the time as "tidal waves."

The cellars of hotels and pubs were flooded leaving beer barrels and cases floating around.

Many homes were also affected and pensioners living in Walcote Road had to be evacuated by firefighters.

Alan Godding, now 66 and living in Shropshire, was a fresh-faced Mail trainee reporter at the time – and it happened to be his first day on the job.

"I rounded Pugh's corner (now Wesses bakery) into The Square," he said, "to find the whole town centre submerged. It would have been pretty feeble for a new reporter not to make it to work so I waded to the office which is where the Tesco supermarket now is."

Mr Godding said the Mail newsroom that day was chaotic, with the telephone going haywire – an instrument he had never used before that day as phones were not that common in people's homes back then.

He added: "There was a lot of chasing and dashing around. It was pretty chaotic. I tried to stay out of the way! The town centre was completely impassable but you could get around it if you waded round near the library in Adam and Eve Street."

Pete Callis (69), of Gardiner Street, recalls he was working at Gardiners Furniture (now Carpet Parade] in St Mary's Road at the time.

Now a Harborough district councillor, he said: "I remember wading through the floods. I lived in Patrick Street at the time.

"The roundabouts in the town couldn't be seen because they were completely under the water. You could just see the lamp-posts sticking out."

The Mail reported that despite the "dire situation" there was still a touch of humour in the air. On a wall in High Street was a card which read: "High Tide, 2pm." And in its coverage at the time the Mail noted ironically that the film showing at The Ritz Cinema that day was "Don't Go Near the Water" starring Glenn Ford and Anne Francis.