South Forty-Foot Drain - History

History

The Lincolnshire Fens are an area of low-lying land which have been subject to flooding and attempts to prevent it for centuries. In medieval times, the Midfen Dyke was built to drain the area, but by 1500, this was regarded less as a drain for the land than as a boundary marker between the Parts of Holland and the Parts of Kesteven, two of the three medieval subdivisions of Lincolnshire which functioned as county councils until their abolition in 1974. The first serious attempt to drain the area to the south west of Boston, now known as the Black Sluice Area but formerly known as the Lindsey Level, was from 1635 to 1638, when the Earl of Lindsey agreed with the Commissioners of Sewers for Lincolnshire to carry out drainage works which would make 36,000 acres (150 km2) of land available for agricultural use. The Earl and his colleagues paid for the works, in return for land grants.

The cost of the work was £45,000, and involved the construction of a sluice near Boston, called Skirbeck Sluice, the construction of the first 8 miles (13 km) of the South Forty-Foot Drain, from Boston to Great Hale, the construction of two drains from there to Guthram, which were called the Double Twelves, and the construction of the Clay Dyke Drain. The scheme was not popular with local landowners, who destroyed much of the work and burnt the Skirbeck Sluice. The Earl of Lindsey's contract with the Commissioners of Sewers was revoked by parliament, and it was another hundred years before the next attempt to drain the area.

In an attempt to drain Holland Fen, and prevent flooding from the River Witham, an adventurer called Earl Fitzwilliam constructed a drain in 1720, which runs broadly parallel to the River Witham, and terminated at Lodewick's Gowt, a sluice which he constructed on the Witham close to the location of the present Grand Sluice. The drain was for many years called Earl Fitzwilliam's drain, but is now called the North Forty-Foot Drain. The scheme was not entirely successful.