Swinefleet Warping Drain is an artificial waterway in the English county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, which was built to allow silt to be deposited on the peat moors, but now functions as a land drainage channel.

Ralph Creyke was a proponent of warping, a process where silt-laden water was allowed to flow over barren land, and to deposit the silt on its surface.

His next major project was for "warping and otherwise improving certain moors, commons and wastes and other low grounds in the parishes of Whitgift and Snaith" and for this he obtained an Act of Parliament in 1820.

[2] In order to achieve this, he constructed the Swinefleet Warping Drain southwards from the River Ouse to improve land on the edge of Thorne Moors for agriculture.

Banks were constructed on either side of the main channel, and the drain initially ran for around 3 miles (4.8 km), with the project including land purchase and the building of the sluice costing £18,000.

Most of the watercourses within their jurisdiction are man-made,[15] and this includes that part of Swinefleet Warping Drain which is north of the county border at Blackwater Dyke.

The installation was the first in the United Kingdom to use a new design of screw pump, enclosed in a vinyl ester pipe, which greatly improves its efficiency, and allows fish to travel through it without harm.

[22] The safety of the A161 bridge was raised in Parliament in 1939, when Mr Adam Hills MP for Pontefract stated that both it and the bridge over Earnshaw's Warping Drain to the west were unsafe, and that Goole Urban District Council had been in conversation with the West Riding of Yorkshire County Council for ten years, but had failed to reach an agreement.

The grade II listed building is made of brown brick with a Welsh slate roof, and has two storeys with an attic.

[24] Continuing to the south, Quay Road leaves the side of the drain, but the parish boundary remains on the right bank.

The railway was carried over the drain by a steel girder bridge, 120 feet (37 m) in length, which was the subject of an unusual request by Colonel Thompson in 1906.

A heated Board meeting followed, but permission was given, although the Colonel had to indemnify the railway should an accident occur in which the ladies were involved.

[29] The reach of the River Ouse near the outflow of the Swinefleet Warping Drain heads in a south-westerly direction travelling upstream, and then makes a right-angle turn to the north-west.

This was cut in the 1800s by a local farmer called George Rawden Earnshaw, who lived at Manor Cottage in Old Goole.

Both are grade II listed, although only the south-western face of the bridge is visible, the rest being obscured by later earth infill, from when the road was widened.

[31] Nearby on the right bank is Goole Hall, a grade II* listed house built in 1820 for Jarvis Empson, and largely unaltered until 1985–86.

Prior to 2019, the data was labelled as if it was for Swinefleet Warping Drain, but querying it with the Environment Agency led them to correct the location.

Like many rivers in the UK, the chemical status changed from good to fail in 2019, due to the presence of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) and mercury compounds, neither of which had previously been included in the assessment.