Beverley and Barmston Drain

The Beverley and Barmston Drain is the main feature of a land drainage scheme authorised in 1798 to the west of the River Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The area consisted of salt marshes to the south and carrs to the north, fed with water from the higher wolds which lay to the north, and from inundation by tidal water passing up the river from the Humber. Some attempts to reduce the flooding by building embankments had been made by the fourteenth century, and windpumps appeared in the seventeenth century. The Holderness Drainage scheme, which protected the area to the east of the river, was completed in 1772, and attention was then given to resolving flooding of the carrs.

Embanking the River Hull, and carrying water away from the carrs in a lower level channel was suggested by several engineers, but there was opposition to making the scheme really efficient. Some came from the Holderness Drainage, who insisted that any embankments must ensure that land to the west of the river flooded before their own area was threatened, while an outfall to the Humber was resisted by the Port of Hull, who wanted the water to enter the river to sluice silt from its mouth, known as the Old Harbour. The Beverley and Barmston Drainage Act was finally obtained in 1798, and work began. Water from the north east of the region was diverted to a new sea outfall at Barmston, and 23 miles of drainage cuts were constructed, the main channel running broadly parallel to the river, but following a straighter course.

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