Firstly just a concluding comment on the point I made at the end of the last blog – yes, as with roadside grass verges, it may be considered right to trim back undergrowth for the first metre from the edge of the path or road, this usually done after 1st June, but why flail all the green growth from the whole drain-side. Indeed from a safety point of view a child scrambling down the steep side of a main drain is then more likely to fall in the water than if their fall were broken by dense undergrowth. Am I the only one who thinks this so?
Yesterday’s mention of Holderness Drain invites a bit of landscape history context. The eastern side of the R. Hull valley (the land between the River itself and the undulations of the Holderness plain) was/is wider than the level land on the west side of the River itself, thus having more land to drain. The Cistercian monks of Meaux Abbey (see photo.) were the first to dig drainage channels (although their principal purpose was to provide a transport artery to the River Hull) in the Meaux/Wawne area of the flood-plain in the 12th and 13th centuries. The drainage history of this area was complex (see J. Sheppard The Draining of the Hull Valley, (E.Y.L.H.S. reprinted 1976) the excavation of the Holderness Drain in the 1830s being one of the last major projects. The second edition of the O.S. 1” map of the 1850s shows the mouth of the Drain in open countryside well east of Hull and just west of Marfleet village, crossed by the Hull – Hedon turnpike (later Hedon Road). Now, with the expansion of the built-up area of East Hull, the Drain passes through part of Longhill and Bilton Grange estates and is crossed by Salthouse, Holderness High and Preston Roads before its outflow between Alexandra and King George Docks (developed after the Drain was dug).
(to be continued)