134 



Rye and Derwent Drainage. 



up the river, dating from about a century later, the two possessing, 

 at the time the dams were removed, a fall of 11 feet. Subsequent 

 demands for water-power had multiplied the number of the mills 

 of one sort or another at Mai ton drawing their water-power from 

 the same head, to six, computed to possess a power equal to 

 that of about 85 horses. In the reign of Queen Anne, the 

 Derwent was made navigable up to Malton, and, in the begin- 

 ning of this century, the navigation was extended from Malton 

 to Yeddingham on the Old Derwent, by the erection of locks, &c., 

 at New and Old Malton, which enabled barges of 4 feet draught 

 to go up a distance of about 11 miles towards the east end of the 

 vale. On the river Rye at Newsham (which is distant from 

 Malton by the river above 9 miles) was a mill with a fall of about 

 6 feet, and the power used at this mill was computed at about that 

 of 10 horses, although there was much water that ran to waste. 



Such were the obstructions which the wants of former ages, 

 and the necessities of different circumstances, caused to be raised 

 upon these rivers which were then, as now, the only means of 

 drainage of this extensive vale ; and it is to be remarked that 

 they principally existed at the worst possible point, where the 

 united river passed as it were the basin of the lake, and entered 

 into the ravine through which all its waters had to flow over a 

 limited and rocky bed. Thus art, for the possession of about 

 seventy-horse power, had erected obstructions upon the river at 

 the point where a beneficent Nature had, in ages long since past, 

 by internal dislocation or external denudation, opened a passage 

 for the discharge of the waters of this primaeval lake, leaving a 

 rich alluvium which only requires that art should assist, and not 

 obstruct, the operations of nature, to be- — or, perhaps, it may be 

 said already is — one of the most beautiful and fertile vales in 

 England. 



This is an instance where the first and great object of attain- 

 ment obviously was the removal of the dams, locks, and waths 

 or fords, and the straightening of crooked parts of the rivers, and 

 particularly widening the embouchures of the several streams at 

 their junctions with the main rivers ; so that the waters might be 

 brought down from the distant moorlands, and passed out of 

 the valley through the ravine at Malton with such rapidity, that 

 in ordinary floods, particularly those of summer, the water may be 

 cleared out of the district before it has had time to pond back ; 

 and in the case where the rain has fallen partially, at either the 

 west or the eastern district of the vale, the flood- water of one river 

 have passed the junction before that of the other has come down. 



Public attention had frequently been called to the subject of 

 draining this vale. In the year 1800 an Act was obtained for 

 draining its eastern end as far as Yeddingham Bridge, called the 



