Pensioner John Hills' 300 year-old cottage has been flooded six times this winter - and he is not covered by insurance.

Yesterday's deluge left his former drover's cottage in Grove Hill, near Hellingly, waterlogged again.

He said: "I woke up at 3am and saw the river was high and it was raining hard so I got up and started moving things out of the ground floor."

By 10am his home -named River Cottage - was under 15in of water.

He said: "You do start to get used to it but I don't know how much longer I can cope."

The 67-year-old, who has lived in the riverside house for 23 years, said the floods had been far worse this winter than ever before.

He said: "It flooded in 1987 before the big storm but that was a one-off. It has been terrible this year."