Hatfield Chase

Hatfield Chase
The South Idle Bank drain looking towards Tunnel Pits
Shire county	South Yorkshire
Region	Yorkshire and the Humber
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
List of places UK England Yorkshire

Hatfield Chase is a low-lying area in South Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, England. It was often flooded. Hatfield chase was a royal hunting ground until Charles I tried to have it drained. He hired a Dutch engineer to drain the water in 1626.^[1] The engineer's name was Cornelius Vermuyden. He also changed the courses of the rivers Don, Idle and Torne. This included making drainage channels. But the project was not completely successful. More work was done in the 1760s to see to the problem of winter flooding. Modern pumps now work to drain the area. The history of Hatfield chase goes back to the end of Roman Britain.

1. ↑ Biographical Dictionary of the History of Technology, eds. Lance Day, Ian McNeil (London; New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 725