Welcome to the Driffield Navigation
The Driffield Navigation was built as an amenity for the local community in the 18th Century. Now, in the 21st Century, it's role has changed but it is still, perhaps even more so, a great asset to the area and various communities of people whose lives are enriched by contact with some aspect of this priceless rural waterway.
It was built from 1760-1805 by canalising the northern half of the River Hull to improve shipping between Driffield, in the heart of East Yorkshire, via the port city of Kingston upon Hull and the Humber Estuary to the North Sea. It is a system of manmade canals, canalised river and navigable river including the Driffield Canal, parts of the River Hull, West Beck and Frodingham Beck. These navigable waterways north of Aike are managed by the Driffield Navigation Trust, who have almost finished works to restore navigation between the Humber and Driffield.
This website is a little different from the old one because it runs on an open-source web-database system called Drupal. Basically this means that it is better designed to support a community of people whose interest in the navigation can vary widely, be they visitors to the area, local residents, boaters, ramblers, local historians, birdwatchers, anglers, canoeists, etc.
The most noticeable differences are :
- Finding the information you want is much easier. The wordsearch box now appears in the top right corner of every page and the advanced search allows you to filter by category and type of information. This is by far the best tool if you are looking for something specific. In the bar across the top of each page, you'll find the links to content categories, it's better if you just click on them each in turn to see what's there rather than me trying to describe it!
- There's a whole bunch of clever tools and useful features to help more people participate in the driffield navigation community online. To really get the most out of this website, you have to create a user login account. It's very easy, quick, harmless and free! All you need is an email address that we can send your password to. If you don't have an email address don't worry: click here.
- Post new articles, discussions, event announcements, archive images and more to share with others. In the old days people had to email their article to the webmaster who would format and integrate it into the site by hand. Now you can create and upload articles directly to the site for others to see instantly. Articles may be moderated before they are published, but the author is able to edit or revise their work at any time before or after it is published.
- Discuss any article or topic with other users by adding comments to the foot of any page - and you can reply to others' comments just like a threaded discussion forum. In the old days, comments and questions were in one part of the site and the articles in another! If you are familiar with web forums, this is like combining the forum and webpages, so that each page on the site is effectively a forum topic. If you've not used a web forum - please give this one a try!