Rye and Derwent Drainage. 



135^ 



Muston Drainage District. Tliis was effected by turning a 

 portion of the fiood-wditev by a sluice and a new cut, from the 

 upper third of the River Derwent directly into the sea, and by a 

 new river or drain from Muston to Yeddingham, draining an 

 area of about 12,000 acres. Several proposals had been made 

 to drain the western and mid portions of the valley from Hoving- 

 ham and Nunnington to Pickering and Yeddingham, but it was 

 not until the year 1845 that sufficient unanimity could be ob- 

 tained to take any decided steps for the attainment of this great 

 object. However, in the following year application was made 

 to Parliament, and an Act obtained which incorporated fifty-three 

 parishes and townships in the North and East Ridings into a 

 drainage district^ and appointed about seventy Commissioners, 

 who were all either landed proprietors or their agents, with 

 powers to purchase and remove the mills, mill-dams, locks, 

 shoals, &c., and to assess the lands benefited according to the 

 benefit received, or that might be received, in a sum of money 

 not to exceed 30,000Z. 



I shall take leave, in rather minute detail, to give an account 

 of the proceedings of the Commissioners, even at the risk, I fear, 

 of being considered tedious, but in the hope that they may afford 

 some clue for the guidance of others. 



In consequence of the heavy rains and of the floods thereby 

 occasioned on the lands adjoining the Rivers Rye and Derwent, 

 and the great injury done thereby to the growing crops in 1845, 

 I was induced for the third time in the course of twenty years, 

 with the approbation of Lord Carlisle, under whose auspices I 

 have acted in any interest I took in carrying out the drainage, to 

 try whether the obstructions in these rivers, caused by three mill- 

 dams (namely, one at New Malton, one at Old Malton, and that 

 at Newsham), might not be removed. My first step was to press 

 Lord Fitzwilliam's agent (Mr. Allen) into the service. He, 

 Lord Carlisle's solicitor, and myself, waited upon a few of the 

 largest proprietors of land embraced in the scheme, who, with 

 very few exceptions, came cordially into the measure we proposed 

 to take, viz., to convene (by issuing circulars) a meeting of all the 

 proprietors of land in the district. Paper 1, with others given 

 in the Appendix, is a copy of the circular, and Paper 2 the 

 result of the meeting. In the Session of 1846, the Act termed 

 * Th& Rye and Derwent Drainage Act' was obtained. Among 

 the first steps taken by the Commissioners under the Act was a 

 resolution to advertise for a surveyor or surveyors, to survey, 

 level, and map the whole of the lands which they considered 

 would fall within the limits of the Act. Paper No. 3 is a copy 

 of the specification, &c. &c. The next important step was the 

 appointment of two valuers, with an umpire, into whose hands 

 of course the plans and books of reference were placed, and they 



