Counter Drain
Counter drain is another term for much the same thing though in this case, it may have been designed also to deal with water overflowing the river bank. The counter drain would therefore need to be bigger than the soak dike. Counter drain has tended to supersede the other term, particularly in its use as a proper name.
The Counter Drain in Deeping Fen is a good example, where the land between it and the bank of the River Glen was designed as a wash. In other words, the land between the river and the outer bank of the counter drain was originally intended to act as a reservoir in the event of an overflow from the river.
Read more about this topic: Soak Dike
Famous quotes containing the words counter and/or drain:
“As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)
“When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, to be sold by retail, in gas jars; then may we hope to comprehend the infinitudes of man’s soul under formulas of Profit and Loss; and rule over this too, as over a patent engine, by checks, and valves, and balances.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)