THREE thousand young pheasants drowned at Bramshott during ten minutes of lashing rain which flooded their shed on Saturday.

The pheasants were reared by Diane and Gerald Barker at the Rainbow's End farm home of Bramshott Game Birds.

Mrs Barker told The Herald: "My husband and I were out in the field in the rain to shut some baby pheasants away.

"We took shelter, thinking the rain would pass and then my husband noticed the water pouring from the shed."

They opened the door and found around 3,000 chicks had drowned.

Mrs Barker said the chicks were valued at about £10,000.

She said the rain had lashed down flooding the field in a matter of ten minutes.

There was further catastrophe, added Mrs Barker, out in the fields where the force of the driving rain had flattened other sheds but no other game birds were injured.

r Torrential rain, thunder and lightning lashed down on Liphook late on Saturday afternoon, causing power failures and flooding across the village.

Organisers of the Liphook Infant School summer fete counted their blessings as the event had just ended when the storm began.

Chairman of the Parents' Association Beth Marr returned to her Haslemere Road home and minutes later raw sewage erupted from a manhole outside her front door and flooded her garage and garden.

"It's the second time in ten months this has happened," she told The Herald.

Although her husband Nigel and friends eventually managed to sweep out the worst of the sewage, garden furniture and equipment and children's toys have been lost.

Mrs Marr said she was promised by Thames Water last year that the disaster would not be repeated and work would be carried out to the sewer, but it clearly had not happened.

All over the village tennis fans had been waiting to watch Tim Henman's semi-final from Wimbledon. But as the players came out the power went off in Liphook. There were four short power failures throughout the early evening.

Roads turned to rivers and later their surfaces were left covered in gravel.

At Hill House Hill the road was flooded for several hours.