Hatfield Chase
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Hatfield Chase is a low-lying area in South Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, England, which was often flooded. It was a royal hunting ground until Charles I appointed the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden to drain it in 1626. The work involved the re-routing of the Rivers Don, Idle, and Torne, and the construction of drainage channels. It was not wholly successful, but changed the whole nature of a wide swathe of land including the Isle of Axholme, and caused legal disputes for the rest of the century. The civil engineer John Smeaton looked at the problem of wintertime flooding in the 1760s, and some remedial work was carried out.
The South Idle Bank drain looking towards Tunnel Pits
Original watercourses and the drainage scheme
The pumping station at Bull Hassocks. The South Engine Drain runs from behind the station to the River Trent
The pumping station at Dirtness, at the start of the North Engine Drain
Cornelius Vermuyden
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Sir Cornelius Vermuyden was a Dutch engineer who introduced Dutch land reclamation methods to England.
Letter by Vermuyden to the Church Council of the Dutch Reformed Church in London, 1639