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Holderness Drain is the main feature of a Land Drainage scheme for the area of Holderness to the east of the River Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. Construction began in 1764, and several notable civil engineers were involved with the scheme over the years. Despite the high costs of the initial scheme, it was not particularly successful, because of the refusal of the ship owners of Hull to allow an outlet at Marfleet. They insisted that the water be discharged into the River Hull to keep the channel free of silt. Following a period of agricultural depression and the building of new docks in the early 1800s, an outlet at Marfleet was finally authorised in 1832. A high level system still fed upland water to the Hull, but the low level system discharged into the Humber, where levels were considerably lower. Following the success of steam pumping on the Beverley and Barmston Drain, the trustees looked at such a possibility for the Holderness Drain, but the development of the Alexandra Dock in the 1880s and then the King George V Dock in 1913 provided a solution, as the docks were topped up with water pumped from the drain, to lessen the ingress of silt-laden water. Responsibility for the scheme rested with the Trustees of Holderness Drainage from its inception in 1764 until 1930, when a major overhaul of land drainage legislation took place. Since then it has been managed by a Catchment Board, a River Board, a River Authority, a Water Authority, the National Rivers Authority and the Environment Agency. Since 1930, the smaller drainage ditches that feed into the Holderness Drain have been the responsibility of an Internal Drainage Board. In order to improve the efficiency of the system, pumping stations were build at Tickton, Great Culvert and East Hull in 1972. However, attitudes to land drainage have changed and the Tickton station is now deemed to be uneconomic, and will be closed down unless alternative sources of income to fund its operation can be found. ==History== The valley of the River Hull was regularly inundated with fresh water in the north, and salt water in the south in the early medieval period. Hamlets along the edges of the Humber and the Hull built banks to prevent the inundation by sea water in the early fourteenth century, as King Edward II appointed commissioners in 1311 and 1313, with responsibilities to inspect and repair the banks. However, the commissioners were only appointed when the walls were breached, and once repairs had been made, they were disbanded. There was no regular inspection of the banks. As well as preventing the ingress of sea water, the banks also prevented fresh water from the land reaching the Humber, and so a network of channels were cut, to channel water to the Hull and the Humber. Primitive sluices were built where the channels passed through the banks, to ensure that water only passed in one direction. The carrs to the north remained flooded, although a number of channels were cut through them by the monks from Meaux Abbey. These ran in an east-west direction and were primarily to aid transport by boat, rather than for drainage, although their large size tended to have some affect on the land. A move towards a more comprehensive system of control occurred in 1532, with the passing of the Stature of Sewers. This created Commissioners of Sewers in the main areas of England and Wales which had significant areas of marshland. They had considerable powers, which were exercised through Courts of Sewers. Two such Courts were created in the Hull valley. One was based at Beverley, with separate juries for North, Middle and South Holderness and three other areas, while the second was based at Hull. They were initially only concerned with existing banks and drains, but in 1580 they organised the construction of a new drain to link Monkdike to Forthdike, providing a more southerly outlet for the water, where the level of the Hull was lower at low tide. An extensive survey of all the drains and banks was made between 1660 and 1662, with the details recorded in a book of pains, now held by the East Riding Record Office. Pains was the term used for records of the size of such structures, the intervals at which they had to be repaired or scoured, and the penalties for failing to carry out the repairs. The idea of taking the waters from the carrs in the north to a new outlet near Marfleet on the Humber was suggested by Mr Snow in 1671. He was a Commissioner of Sewers, and proposed a new drain from Forthdike to Marfleet, passing to the east of Sutton, whose inhabitants had resisted previous attempts at a solution. Snow offered to cut the drain in return for use of the drained land for a period of 21 years, but he failed to obtain the consent of the landowners or an Act of Parliament to authorise it. Sir Joseph Ashe made some improvements to his Wawne estate, which included cutting the Engine Drain, at the end of which he built two windmills to raise the water into the Hull. Others followed suit, and there were around a dozen drainage windmills in the area by the early eighteenth century. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Holderness Drain」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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