Street sign in Sandtoft, Lincolnshire, England
This street sign in Sandtoft, north Lincolnshire, commemorates the Dutch drainage engineer, Cornelius Vermuyden, who in the 1620s orchestrated the drainage of Hatfield Chase, a large tract of marshy land west of the River Trent and south of the River Ouse, south-west of the Humber estuary. Vermuyden received a knighhood but the ainage was not very successful to the extent that "Adventurers" - investors who financed the project in the expectation of being awarded newly drained land - received considerably less land than they expected. Ensuing legal disputes even resulted in Vermuyden spending part of 1633 in the Fleet debtors' jail in London.
Size: 4288px × 2848px
Photo credit: © John Worrall / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: 17th, adventurers, century, chase, cornelius, drainage, drainers, draining, dutch, england, hatfield, land, lincolnshire, marsh, marshes, sandtoft, sign, south, speculation, street, uk, vermuyden, yorkshire
