What can I do abut the high water table round my house?

[Oversize]

It's all around the back, front and side of my semi. The sand in the drive just washes away and the lawn is waterlogged. There's no where to drain to because a soakaway would just fill with water.

Is your house built on a flood plain? A lot of new builds are. You can check out your postcode at flood-map-for-planning.service.gov.uk/ to see. If that's the issue then there's not much you can do but sell up and buy on higher ground, or learn to live with the water.

The house was built in the 1920s/30s. I think the only real option is to see if it's possible to drain the water into pipes that will take it away- like waste water pipes but I have no idea how or even if I can do that.

We live on high ground with a heavy clay. We bought a boring drill type device which we can screw in about 1m deep. It turns out that about one or two feet down, there is an inch or two of compressed, grey gleyed layer that is very difficult for the water to penetrate. A few boreholes beyond that in the swampiest part of the garden helps a bit (back filled with grit to keep it porous)

OK for higher areas prone to poor groundwater drainage. No use for low level floodplains.

@BogRollBOGOF that sounds interesting, not boring at all!

That sounds interesting thanks. I'll have a Google.

Surely, it's the perfect excuse for a moat.