Vermuyden’ Subsidiary Works – The Dutch River

Flooding at Fishlake & Sykehouse — The Price of Imperfection

Even as these new works were rising, serious problems were emerging elsewhere in the drainage system. The diversion of the River Don northward into the Aire had unintended consequences for the settlements along its banks, and the villages of Fishlake and Sykehouse suffered severe flooding as a direct result of Vermuyden’s works — inundations from waters that had never previously troubled them.

The complaints of the inhabitants were not merely petitions to distant authorities. They took direct action. In May 1630, the inhabitants of Fishlake and Sykehouse reached an agreement with Vermuyden, paying him the considerable sum of £200 — and in return, Vermuyden was compelled to restore the ancient river banks that his works had disturbed. It was an early and telling sign that the drainage, however ambitious, was imperfect: one community’s reclaimed farmland could too easily become another’s unwanted floodplain.

By 1635, Fishlake inhabitants complained that they had been flooded 30 times in 7 years, with damages amounting to £10,000 (equivalent to £1.2 million today). This was only the latest missive in a petitioning campaign to Westminster, often organised in collaboration with other Don-edge villages. The human cost was vividly described in these petitions: houses were defaced and spoiled, crops washed away, harvests ruined, and cattle drowned or left starving. Communities reported that this had left them so reduced in circumstances that they were dependent on the charity of others.

“The humble petition of Francis Trymmyngham and William Abbotson, on the behalf of themselves and other the Tenants and inhabitants of Fishlake and Sykehouse in the Countie of Yorke, against Cornelius Vermuyden, Sir Philip Vernatti and divers others.​

“Now for as much [as] that for inasmuch as the complainants are above the number of 300 householders, their husbandmen, their losses insupportable, as tending to utter ruin and confusion; especially by their late His Majesty’s commissions, whereby the petitioners’ houses and goods are wholly destroyed and spoiled, their cattle drowned, and their lands without crops to be almost anything at all these past two or three years. And for that the poor to whom (such) by their present losses are so impoverished that they are not able to prosecute and continue in law such as their diverse pretences of great estate and breed.”

Turnbridge — Sluice, Outfall & Navigation

The works at Turnbridge were among the most significant of the subsidiary programme. A navigable sluice, or Sasse, was constructed there in 1629, but it was the great outfall structure completed alongside it that marked an exceptional feat of engineering for the period.

This outfall sluice was built on a remarkable scale: 17 openings, each 6 feet wide and 8 feet high — a combined waterway of extraordinary capacity, designed to handle the outflows of a large section of the drained level. The engineer responsible was Hugo Spiering, and the works were completed by the end of 1630.

The Dutch River — Compelled by Wentworth & Darcy

The inadequacy of the original drainage outfall arrangements became impossible to ignore by the summer of 1630. In August of that year, Lord Wentworth (the future Earl of Strafford, then Lord President of the North) and Lord Darcy compelled the Participants to undertake a major new work: the construction of an entirely new drain to carry waters to the River Ouse. This ruling was confirmed by Order in council in April 1633. The new five-mile embanked channel was to run from Newbridge to the River Ouse at Goole. The engineering logic was clear: the river levels at Goole were some 5 to 10 feet lower than at Turnbridgedike, and so discharge was more efficient. The total cost of the channel and its outfall sluice was eventually reckoned at £33,000. This became known as the Dutch River — a name that endures to this day near Goole.

The Dutch River had a complicated genesis. It originated as two parallel drains, but was subsequently swept into a single wide channel by a catastrophic flood in the late 17th century, nature accomplishing in one violent event what engineering had laboured to achieve. A sluice was constructed as part of the original scheme, but this too was washed away, and a new sluice was built in 1651 to replace it. Crucially, the Dutch River was used only for drainage, navigation continued to use the old route through to the Aire at Turnbridge, preserving that commercial waterway corridor.

The cost for building this New River was to be borne by the Particiopants and this led to disagreement between the participants and Vermuyden

The financial and professional quarrel between Vermuyden and the Participants was bitter and long-running. Losses incurred by the investors were caused not only by the actions of disgruntled commoners but also by Vermuyden’s chaotic financial management. The Participants accused Vermuyden of making fundamental engineering errors that had created the flooding problem in the first place, and of failing to honour his commitments to repair it. Vermuyden, for his part, argued that the Participants had failed to contribute their share to the costs of remediation and improvement.

The investor Sir Philibert Vernatti became a focal point of this conflict. A lawsuit brought against Vermuyden in the Court of Chancery, headed by Vernatti, forced Vermuyden to give his own account of what had gone wrong, presenting himself as a man who had done his best under severe difficulties not of his own making. Whatever the merits of the competing claims, the conflicts between Vermuyden and the commoners, and between the Participants and Vermuyden, caused an enormous increase in costs and made it impossible for the Participants to settle the land and earn any income from it.

Meanwhile, the people of Fishlake were taking matters into their own hands. Residents cut gaps in Vermuyden’s bank to alleviate flooding on their lands, redistributing the problem using their own deep knowledge of the local waterscape. They could not, they said, contend in law with the drainers, “beinge persons of great estate, and friends” — so direct action was their only recour