Wartime drainage and water level management in the East Riding of Yorkshire 1939–1945

This article examines wartime drainage and water level management in the East Riding of Yorkshire, a microcosm of what transpired right across lowland England between 1939 and 1945. War enabled the British state through its local representatives, the East Riding War Agricultural Executive Committee and the River Hull Catchment Board, to pass measures deemed necessary for improving land drainage and managing water levels that it had little likelihood of realising in peacetime. As the conflict intensified, drainage works undertaken as part of the war effort to increase domestic food production were transformed by time and necessity into virtual weapons of war, and water levels were manipulated to provide essential services to urban and rural communities alike. The significance of flooding, too, underwent a subtle change. From being considered merely a threat to urban properties and rural livelihoods, flood became an existential threat to the nation, a form of “sabotage” carried out by a “fifth columnist” nature and demanding to be combated as such. As with all other sectors of society and the economy, the drains of Britain and how they were managed were mobilised for total war.