Draining a Lawn

HayDay18

The issue with our lawn is that the soil on it (and all surrounding the site) is quite heavy, clay type soil. Its very squidgy/squelchy to walk on in areas during wet weather. It has poor drainage in the soil itself I think and we have rushes growing in the field and now on our lawn also. We want to tackle the lawn and improve it before we progress with any other groundswork. Our initial idea (Option 1) was to drain it in the form of some french drains / shores with 4-ins pipe across the lawn at 15ft intervals. After chatting to people, one person we know suggested scraping all the soil off the lawn and putting down a full gravel drainage layer (Option 2). He said that if we drain it using drains we could have a stripy scenario where some parts are well drained and some are not. I had never heard of this idea but it sounds very good. I chatted to the diggerman he said any type of gravel would work for this even shale.

Regardless of which method we use we will be topping it off with some good brought in top-soil. its a sloped lawn but that has never helped it be less wet.

We need to scrape some gravel off from around the site where concrete is to be laid so we can probably provide half the gravel needed for Option 2. The expense of either method is not a deal breaker, we want a nice lawn that doesn't have rushes growing on it and we didn't invest in doing it right on Day 1.

Any advice recommendations welcome, especially from anyone that has improved a heavy/wet lawn. TIA