Home › Rivers › River Witham › Main Drain

Main Drain

A stream near Burton Waters, Lincolnshire. No gauge of its own: what the river map and the banked data say about it.

Main Drain is a stream on Ordnance Survey’s river map near Burton Waters, Lincolnshire, with about 16 km of mapped channel. On the map it flows into the River Witham, which flows on into the Haven and out to the sea.

Next gauge downstream

The Environment Agency’s records and the river map disagree about which way the water runs near the next gauge, so no gauge is named until that is checked.

Storm overflows on Main Drain

1 storm overflow is placed on this stream on the river map. Each status is the water company’s own monitor.

Skellingthorpe STW Not discharging
Anglian Water · into Skellingthorpe Main Drain · 2025: 28 spills, 420 h

A status says whether an overflow is discharging now, never how much or why. A monitor that is offline or has not reported is not “not discharging”. Sewage in Britain’s rivers →

Live status: © Anglian Water storm overflow activity data, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Annual spill figures: Environment Agency Event Duration Monitoring return, © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right, Open Government Licence (OGL) v3.0.

Water-sampling points on Main Drain

2 Environment Agency sampling points are placed on this stream. These are dated samples taken by hand, not live readings, and FloodRadar does not grade them.

Main Drain at North Carlton Covert, Tillbridge Lane
Last sampled 9 Sep 2026 · 22 days ago · 9 samples banked
Skellingthorpe Main Drain downstream of sewage treatment works
Last sampled 8 Sep 2026 · 23 days ago · 29 samples banked

A sample is taken on a date; it says nothing about the water today. A sample below an overflow does not by itself show where anything in it came from.

Water samples: Environment Agency Water Quality Archive, © Environment Agency and/or database right 2026, Open Government Licence v3.0.

Places along it

From its source towards its mouth, the settlements within a kilometre of it on the map: Burton Waters, New Boultham, St Catherines.

On the map

The map needs JavaScript. Everything it shows is listed on this page.

The blue line is Main Drain; grey lines are other mapped watercourses. Lines from OS Open Rivers (edition 2026-04).

The River Witham, the river it joins →LN5 7YA, a postcode page near where it ends on the map (about 30 m away) →All rivers with gauges →

What this page can and cannot tell you

Its line, its name and where it flows come from Ordnance Survey’s river map (OS Open Rivers, edition 2026-04), which leaves out many small streams, ditches and culverts. “Flows into” is the map’s word: a channel that is not on the map is not shown here, which does not mean it is not there.
No gauge measures Main Drain itself, so its own level is not known here.
Storm overflows are listed only where the river map places them on this stream; an overflow it could not place is not counted.
Water samples are England’s only (the Environment Agency’s archive), placed where the map can place their sampling point.
Nothing on this page says whether any place floods. For an address, see its postcode page.