Thames Water was feeling the pressure last week after a burst main in Roehampton left the busy A3 under-water and closed for eight hours, wasting huge amounts of water and disrupting thousands of motorists.

And after possibly millions of gallons of water headed down the road to Surrey, the water company this week confirmed no end to the hosepipe ban was in sight, despite a weekend of relentless storms.

The disaster struck during rush hour last Tuesday, when a main pipe burst near Asda in Roehampton Vale. As a result the southbound carriageway on to the A3 had to be closed.

The flooding eased off when the water was turned off three or four hours later, but massive tailbacks and deadlock throughout the area rapidly developed as sections of the road were closed for as long as eight hours to allow emergency repairs to be carried out.

Drivers were diverted down Wimbledon Parkside, from Tibbets Corner, but it was not long before Wimbledon itself was struggling to cope with the huge increase in traffic.

The road was closed between Wandsworth Gyratory and Tibbets Corner and there were major delays on Putney Hill and the South Circular.

Even the following day, on Wednesday, two southbound lanes by Tibbets Corner remained closed.

Motorist Vikki Thomas, of Putney, said: "There was a lot of rubble on the road and it looked as though the water had erupted through the ground.

"There was no way cars could have driven down the A3 that afternoon, the water looked as though it was at least four feet deep. The customers were peering out of the windows of ASDA, they all looked very shocked."

A spokesman for Thames Water confirmed they were contacted at 4.50pm after a 15-inch trunk main burst at Roehampton Vale, but said the cause could be anything from traffic movement to temperature fluctuations.