Part of the village is built in the natural flood plain of the river Hems and the Gatcombe brook. However, when the railway line was built through Littlehempston in 1847/48, several bridges were constructed to carry it over the river Hems. Unfortunately the bridge apertures were too small, with the result that the Hems in spate was bottled up, and flooding in the surrounding area increased. Floods were a regular misery in the winter (and sometimes at other times of the year as well), and the village centre was sometimes impassable for days. There were particularly bad floods in 1955 and 1993.
Following the 1993/94 flood, villagers banded together to ask the District Council for a flood relief scheme. Their case was accepted, and the scheme was completed in 1996. It mainly consisted of two flood relief channels across the field at the bottom of Silverhead Lane, so that the Gatcombe brook could escape into the Hems downstream of the railway viaduct. This greatly helped the situation. In 2015 the channels were again cleared of silt to maintain their efficacy.
