Cornelius Vermuyden
In the 1650s, he directed major projects to drain The Fens of East Anglia, introducing the innovation of constructing washes, to allow periodic flooding of the area by excess waters.
[4] This, or perhaps work at Windsor, brought him to the notice of Charles I, who commissioned him in 1626 to drain Hatfield Chase in the Isle of Axholme, Lincolnshire.
The local people were upset by the project, particularly those of the Manor of Epworth, whose lord had already enclosed part of the commons in the 14th century.
[6] From 1627, the richer members of the community challenged the project in court by lawsuits, even as large groups of commoners (not necessarily poor people, but including some substantial farmers) rioted against the works and the enclosures.
In 1631 he built the Horseshoe Sluice on the tidal river at Wisbech, Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire at a cost of £8,000, by a "little Army of Artificers Venting, contriving and acting outlandish devises"[8] The work on Hatfield Chase was only partially successful: the straightening of the river Don and outlet into the Aire caused flooding in Fishlake, Sykehouse and Snaith.
The same year he bought 4,000 acres (1,619 ha) of land in Sedgemoor on the Somerset Levels and Malvern Chase in Worcestershire; he also entered into a partnership in the lead mines in Wirksworth, which he drained by means of a sough.
In it, he proposed two innovations to the drainage scheme: washes – areas of land allowed to flood in periods of bad weather to absorb the extra water that cannot drain to the sea – and a catchdrain around the eastern edge of the fen.
This catchdrain follows the contours of the western edge of the hilly brecklands where they rise above the fen, commencing in the south at Mildenhall through Hockwold cum Wilton northwards to Denver Sluice.
At the latter village the River Little Ouse flows westwards off the brecks from Brandon enclosed within high embankments, over an aqueduct many feet higher than the catchment drain and surrounding farmland.
In a precarious position with all three of its kingdoms, the Crown lacked both sufficient funds and attention to pay for the works in the Great Level, but it authorized Vermuyden to start.
Beginning on the south, he set a new sluice, known as Shire Drain, and cut a new channel at the mouth of the Nene through the salt marshes to the sea.
The original financiers – now headed by Bedford's heir William – began to seek an Act of Parliament to overturn the King's takeover of their project and to gain restoration of all of the 95,000 acres (380 km2) first awarded in January 1630/31.
He established Denver Sluice to stop tides and flood water from depositing silt into the Great Ouse to the east of Ely.
The work did not include his projected "cutoff channel," which was designed to take flood water from the southern rivers, the Wissey, Little Ouse and Lark, away from Denver.
Due to the high cost of labour, and the continuing unpopularity of the project among the local inhabitants, the government provided Vermuyden with Scottish and Dutch prisoners of war (after the Battle of Dunbar in 1650) and the start of the war with the Dutch respectively) as labourers in this phase of construction.
[12] Vermuyden lived in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden in 1647 and had a home in Kelfield, North Lincolnshire.
Due to the Second Anglo-Dutch War and the Great Fire of London in 1666 (some blamed the Dutch for), Cornelius Vermuyden decided to alter his surname, which over the years was further altered to what is today the surname Youdan, to which his descendants still live in the East Anglian region today.
