
Adlingfleet is a
drained, fertile, former marshland village in the
East Riding of Yorkshire
The East Riding of Yorkshire, or simply East Riding or East Yorkshire, is a ceremonial county and unitary authority area in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and west, South Yorkshire t ...
, England, that forms part of the
civil parish
In England, a civil parish is a type of Parish (administrative division), administrative parish used for Local government in England, local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below district ...
of
Twin Rivers. It is east-southeast of
Goole
Goole is a port town and civil parish on the River Ouse in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The town's historic county is the West Riding of Yorkshire.
According to the 2011 UK census, Goole parish had a population of 19,518, an increa ...
town centre. Its sea wall along the far north-east is set back from the
Ouse estuary leaving the largest single reedbed in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
.
Geography
Adlingfleet is on a minor road set back from the final, southern bank of the
Ouse estuary. From Goole the road passes
Swinefleet
Swinefleet is a village and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is situated approximately south-east of the town of Goole on the A161 road from Goole to Crowle. It lies on the south bank of the River Ouse.
According t ...
,
Reedness,
Whitgift and
Ousefleet
Ousefleet is a small hamlet in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England approximately east of Goole. It is located just south of the River Ouse and north of the A161 road between Goole and Scunthorpe. It forms part of the civil parish of Twin R ...
before turning to the south by
Blacktoft Sands RSPB reserve to reach the village. The road continues southwards, to
Fockerby
Fockerby is a village in North Lincolnshire, England. It is situated approximately south-east from Goole and west from the River Trent.
Fockerby is part of the Isle of Axholme and close to the border with the East Riding of Yorkshire. Th ...
and
Garthorpe, all in similar multiple-drains fields.
The boundary between the
East Riding of Yorkshire
The East Riding of Yorkshire, or simply East Riding or East Yorkshire, is a ceremonial county and unitary authority area in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and west, South Yorkshire t ...
and
North Lincolnshire
North Lincolnshire is a unitary authority area in Lincolnshire, England, with a population of 167,446 in the 2011 census. The borough includes the towns of Scunthorpe, Brigg, Haxey, Crowle, Epworth, Bottesford, Kirton in Lindsey and Bart ...
comes to a point south of the village centre. It weaves such as along the eastern edge of the housing, then runs east to reach the
Trent estuary. At its north-eastern tip are mud banks, short of
Trent Falls
Trent Falls is the confluence of the River Ouse and the River Trent which forms the Humber between Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire in England.
Location
The River Ouse flows to the east where it turns into the Humber, and t ...
, where Trent and the Ouse meet – forming the
Humber
The Humber is a large tidal estuary on the east coast of Northern England. It is formed at Trent Falls, Faxfleet, by the confluence of the tidal rivers Ouse and Trent. From there to the North Sea, it forms part of the boundary betw ...
.
[Ordnance Survey, 1:25000 map, 2006]
All of the surrounding land is low-lying and flat. It is protected from flooding by sea walls along the banks of: the Trent to the east; and the Ouse to the north. To north and north east the sea wall is set back,
[ leaving to nature the largest tidal reedbed in ]England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
. This is managed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is a charitable organisation registered in England and Wales and in Scotland. It was founded in 1889. It works to promote conservation and protection of birds and the wider environment throu ...
. It is a haven for wildlife. Before the drainage schemes of the 18th century, much more of the area was saltmarsh, leaving soils with varying pH and high concentrations of metals, including ochre
Ochre ( ; , ), or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produce ...
.
History
The village was written as "Adelingesfluet" in the ''Domesday Book
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...
''. From this we know that the lord of the manor was Siward Barn
Siward Barn ( ang, Sigeweard Bearn) was an 11th-century English thegn and landowner-warrior. He appears in the extant sources in the period following the Norman Conquest of England, joining the northern resistance to William the Conqueror by th ...
before the Norman Conquest
The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Norman, Breton, Flemish, and French troops, all led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Conq ...
; later, in 1086, it was Geoffrey de la Guerche.
It was part of the Goole Rural District
Goole was a rural district in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England from 1894 to 1974.
It was created under the Local Government Act 1894, based on most of the Goole rural sanitary district (two parishes of which in Lincolnshire became part of t ...
in the West Riding of Yorkshire
The West Riding of Yorkshire is one of three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county County of York, West Riding (the area under the control of West Riding County Council), abbreviated County ...
from 1894 to 1974, and was then in the Boothferry
Boothferry is a village in the East Riding of Yorkshire in England. It is situated on the north bank of the River Ouse where the A614 road crosses the river. It is about north-west of Goole.
Boothferry is split between civil parishes; areas ...
district of Humberside
Humberside () was a non-metropolitan and ceremonial county in Northern England from 1 April 1974 until 1 April 1996. It was composed of land from either side of the Humber Estuary, created from portions of the East Riding of Yorkshire, West ...
until 1996.
The parish church of All Saints is a Grade I listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ire ...
. The building has a cruciform plan, with a nave, a chancel, a south aisle, north and south transepts, and a square tower at the west end. Much of it is 13th century, with some re-used 12th-century doors. The aisle and tower were built in the 15th century, and various amendments were made in 1792–94, in 1828 and in 1955–57. Internally, the building contains monuments including a very fine knight effigy, to a Haldenby, who died in 1596.
At south is a raised platform for the remains of a rectory, dating from the mid-13th century. It is grade II* listed, and was constructed of ashlar
Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitr ...
and coursed rubble by John le Franceys, who was Adlingfleet's rector and also a king's counsellor. The remains, which have not had a roof since the 1970s, and the platform on which they stand, are a scheduled ancient monument, as there are thought to be the remains of other structures below the surface. West is the old vicarage, built by Tyson in 1796. Red-brick modifications were made in 1835–37 by Erskine Neal. The original structure is in yellow-brown brick.
Adlingfleet Drainage
Adlingfleet Level is of principally former marshland south west of the Trent- Ouse-Humber
The Humber is a large tidal estuary on the east coast of Northern England. It is formed at Trent Falls, Faxfleet, by the confluence of the tidal rivers Ouse and Trent. From there to the North Sea, it forms part of the boundary betw ...
confluence. In 1764, landowners contacted the civil engineer John Smeaton
John Smeaton (8 June 1724 – 28 October 1792) was a British civil engineer responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours and lighthouses. He was also a capable mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist. Smeaton was the firs ...
, who drew up proposals for a drainage scheme. This formed the basis for an Act of Parliament
Acts of Parliament, sometimes referred to as primary legislation
Primary legislation and secondary legislation (the latter also called delegated legislation or subordinate legislation) are two forms of law, created respectively by the legislat ...
, which the landowners obtained in March 1767. The Act authorised Drainage Commissioners to be appointed, and they asked Smeaton's colleague, John Grundy, Jr., to act as engineer for the project. David Buffery was the resident engineer and Charles Tate the land surveyor. Grundy made few changes to Smeaton's plans. By July, he had drawn the plans and specifications for the sluice which would connect the main drain to the Trent, and work began on it in August. A contract for the excavation of the main drain was awarded to James Pinkerton and John Dyson in October. This was the first known civil engineering contract for both men, but they went on to work together on a number of schemes, including the Driffield Navigation and the Laneham Drainage project, and seem to have acted as management contractors, organising and supplying labour to these schemes. By April 1769, all the major elements of the project had been completed, and the project had cost around £7,000 (). The Commissioners retained Buffery, to ensure that some remaining minor works were completed to a satisfactory standard.[
On 13 June 1903 the Commissioners asked J Simmons, an engineer from Doncaster, to estimate the cost of a pumping plant, which would be built at the head of the drain. He produced plans and drawings, liaising with suppliers to obtain costings for the pumps. The engine house would have been with a boiler house which was wide. He submitted the scheme to the Commissioners at a meeting in Goole on 30 June, but they decided that it was too costly, and so he produced a revised scheme, which included a chimney at the engine house. The cost was estimated at £1,452, and another meeting at Goole on 15 July asked him to obtain formal tenders for the engine and pump house. However, the scheme was again considered to be too costly, and the Commissioners wrote to Simmons on 29 July to tell him that it had been cancelled. He invoiced them for 2.5% of the estimate cost, plus travelling expenses, which amounted to £37 1s (£37.05). Following a half-yearly meeting on 10 May 1904, they wrote to say they were willing to pay 10 guineas (£10.50).
]
1927 Upgrade
After periodic flooding in the 1920s, a survey was made, indicating that the fall on the main drain was around 2 inches per mile (30 mm per km), which was not sufficient for good drainage by gravity. Based on the premise that a pumping scheme had an annual cost for running and maintenance, whereas lowering the cill was essentially a one-time cost, the Commissioners of the Adlingfleet and Whitgift Drainage Board asked for tenders for a new sluice in December 1926. The cill would be lower than the existing one, and the contract was for construction of the sluice and work on the drain itself, to make it wider and deeper. Near the sluice, the channel would be wide at the top, wide at the bottom and deep. Decreasing sizes were specified for six sections over its length, with the final section being wide at the bottom and only deep. Various bridges would need their foundations lowered and other improvements to be made, while Gill's Close bridge was to be dismantled and not replaced.
The previous sluice was wide, built of masonry, and was in an unstable condition by this time. The new one would be wide, with wing walls making the entire structure wide. It would be long, and the cill would be below the highest tide level. Construction would be of reinforced concrete, and the sluice would be built slightly to the north of the existing one, so that it could be completed without interrupting the discharge from the drain. Eleven quotations were received, and the contract was awarded to H. Arnold and Son of Doncaster on 15 February 1927, whose estimate was for £13,847. Having built the sluice structure, a new channel was excavated by mechanical excavator, to connect it to the existing drain. On the river side, the new channel was dredged by the Aire and Calder Navigation
The Aire and Calder Navigation is the canalised section of the Rivers Aire and Calder in West Yorkshire, England. The first improvements to the rivers above Knottingley were completed in 1704 when the Aire was made navigable to Leeds and t ...
Company and covered with stone. They had the necessary plant to complete this part of the work. The benefits were expounded by Simmons, the engineers for the work, in an article which appeared in ''The Concrete Way'' in 1929, where he stated that following the work, the water levels in winter were several inches below the normal summer levels.[ In August 1932 Simmons produced a specification for sluice doors to be installed at Willowbank bridge, but they were not installed.
]
Current state
A sluice with pumps was eventually built to the north of Cowlane bridge in Adlingfleet. The control building carries the date 1984 on a large stone built into the walls. Construction of a sewage treatment works next to the sluice was well advanced in 2011. The bridges at Hoggards Lane, Cowlane and Willowbank have been replaced by corrugated steel tubes, backfilled up to the level of the road surface. Mains bridge is still a single arched brick structure, while at the end of the drain, Whinsgate bridge consists of the main brick arch under the A161 road, with arches in both wing walls, which enable tracks to cross Dodds Dyke and Eastoft Drain. The southern track over Eastoft Drain was formerly the course of the Fockerby Branch of the Axholme Joint Railway until its closure in 1965. At the outfall, the pointed gates have gone, replaced by a circular opening through a massed concrete infill, with a flap gate on the outlet side, and a vertical lifting steel gate on the inland side.
Responsibility for the drain changed in 2005, when the Adlingfleet and Whitgift Drainage Commissioners amalgamated with five other Internal Drainage Board
An internal drainage board (IDB) is a type of operating authority which is established in areas of special drainage need in England and Wales with permissive powers to undertake work to secure clean water drainage and water level management withi ...
s, to become part of the Isle of Axholme Internal Drainage Board. It changed again on 1 April 2011, when the new body amalgamated with three more Internal Drainage Boards to become the Isle of Axholme and North Nottinghamshire Water Level Management Board.
Eels
The presence of barriers across waterways has been identified as one of the factors behind the decline in eel populations, and following new regulations introduced in 2009, a study was carried out to assess which catchments bordering the Humber
The Humber is a large tidal estuary on the east coast of Northern England. It is formed at Trent Falls, Faxfleet, by the confluence of the tidal rivers Ouse and Trent. From there to the North Sea, it forms part of the boundary betw ...
could provide suitable habitat for eels. Those with pumps were eliminated, but eight waterways were identified as possible candidates for the fitting of eel passes to aid eel migration. On Adlingfleet drain, the entrance sluice acted as a barrier, and there was a second barrier at the sluice and pumping station by Cowlane Bridge. Although rectification was deemed to be difficult, the drain was ranked fourth in a list of tributaries that could support the migration of eels and other migratory fish. By May 2011, an innovative fish-flap had been fitted, which does not compromise the flood protection, but allows fish to pass at certain states of the tide.
Water quality
The Environment Agency measure the water quality of the river systems in England. Each is given an overall ecological status, which may be one of five levels: high, good, moderate, poor and bad. There are several components that are used to determine this, including biological status, which looks at the quantity and varieties of invertebrate
Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...
s, angiosperm
Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. They include all forbs (flowering plants without a woody stem), grasses and grass-like plants, a vast majority of br ...
s and fish. Chemical status, which compares the concentrations of various chemicals against known safe concentrations, is rated good or fail. Adlingfleet Drain is designated as "artificial", which means that the channels have been created by human activity, and the criteria for this designation are defined by the Water Framework Directive
The Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC is an EU directive which commits European Union member states to achieve good qualitative and quantitative status of all water bodies (including marine waters up to one nautical mile from shore) by 2015 ...
.
The water quality of Adlingfleet Drain was as follows in 2019.
The reasons for the quality being less than good are largely to do with agriculture and land management adjacent to the watercourse. Like many rivers in the UK, the chemical status changed from good to fail in 2019, due to the presence of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) and mercury compounds, neither of which had previously been included in the assessment.
Bibliography
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References
External links
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{{authority control
Villages in the East Riding of Yorkshire
Land drainage in the United Kingdom