Drax is a village and civil parish in the Selby District of North Yorkshire, England, about south-east of Selby, best known today as the site of Drax power station. It was historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire until 1974. The village primary school closed in 2017. History Drax has a Church of England parish church, dedicated to St Peter and St Paul. In the reign of King Henry I (1100–1135) William Paynel founded a priory of Augustinian Canons at Drax. In 1868 it was reported that traces of the priory could still be found but fieldwork in the 1980s and 1990s has failed to find any physical remains of it. By the mid-13th century, Drax was a borough of local significance. However, an inquisition held in 1405 stated that the local manor was of no value, as it had been flooded by the Ouse, and the borough was not even mentioned, leading George Sheeran to claim that flooding may have led to the abandonment of the town, or at least the end of its borough status. However, the inquisition post mortem for Richard Lely of Drax, held in 1422, indicates that his part of the land was not completely worthless, although the mill was ruined. His son John inherited and the property then passed to John's daughter Joan, who had been born and baptised at Drax in 1424. She was married to John Babthorpe in 1441 when witnesses to her age gave depositions at York Castle, and she recovered her property out of wardship. It may be that those who held the land while she was a minor neglected it, so that there was little for her husband to pass on to their heirs. The survival of the priory until the Reformation might suggest that the area continued to be farmed. The main crops were wheat and grain. In 1667 Charles Read (1604–1669) founded Drax Grammar (now called The Read School) as a grammar school: It is an independent boarding school. Read was born at Darlton, Nottinghamshire and became a wealthy shipper in Kingston upon Hull. Two years later, Read's will endowed the school at Drax and founded further grammar schools at Tuxford in Nottinghamshire and Corby Glen in Lincolnshire. Read also funded the building of six almshouses in Drax for elderly people, stipulating that they should be for three men and three women. Drax had two railway