driffield navigation guide

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Great Driffield is a well-built market town, situate at the foot of the Wolds, and noted for the rise of the river Hull, proceeding from several springs which run in various courses in the town and neighbourhood, and forming some of the finest trout streams in the kingdom, and which, in the summer months bring many sporting nobility and gentry to the place. It has a navigable canal communicating with the port of Hull, which has been of great advantage to the place. from Langdale's Yorkshire Dictionary (1822)

The Driffield Navigation is fed by the chalk springs of the Wolds. The canal begins at Riverhead on the south side of Driffield where it is fed by Driffield Beck. The canal was built in the 1760s to help boat traffic on the course of the River Hull, so it flows very close to the shallower, meandering chalkstreams of the River's headwaters; for much of its length only a couple of yards separate the river and the canal until they finally they converge near North Frodingham. The beds of the headwaters and the canal are dotted with hidden springs, which peter out as the chalk layer slopes away beneath the bolder clay of Holderness Plain.