Chesterfield Canal

As built, the canal was almost 46 miles (74 km) long, being 25 miles (40 km) from the Trent to Worksop with a rise of 95 feet (29 m). From Worksop to the eastern portal of Norwood Tunnel it was 6.1 miles (9.8 km) with a further 145 feet (44 m) rise. From there to Chesterfield it was a further 13.9 miles (22.4 km) with a fall of 73 feet (22 m) followed by a rise of 40 feet (12 m). There were 65 locks in all, with two tunnels: a short 154-yard (141 m) tunnel near Gringley Beacon,[14][15] and the major 2,884-yard (2,637 m) long Norwood Tunnel.[lower-alpha 1] At the time of construction, Norwood Tunnel was the second longest canal tunnel in Britain, exceeded only by another of Brindley's tunnels, that at Harecastle on the Trent and Mersey Canal.[17] The canal was a typical Brindley contour canal, following the contours to avoid costly cuttings and embankments, which resulted in a less than direct route in places.

In late 1775, the company had decided to build a branch, which left the canal between Renishaw and Staveley, and ran generally southwards for about 1 mile (1.6 km) to the turnpike road at Norbriggs. This may have been to help with transport to Chesterfield, until the main line was completed, but in 1777, the company leased Norbriggs Colliery. Henshall supervised its operation, and transport of coal to the branch canal was improved by the provision of a "Newcastle Rail Road" in 1778, which used wooden rails. The company pulled out of running the mine in 1797, when they advertised it to be let.[18] Water supply was initially by a reservoir at Pebley, which was later supplemented by reservoirs at Harthill, Woodall and Killamarsh. Near Worksop, a private branch was built to serve the Lady Lee quarry, which ran for about 0.75 miles (1.21 km), while at Netherthorpe, a branch connected to the East Inkersall tramroad, which served pits near the Adelphi Canal.[12] A gasworks was later built at the junction, and while the 1877 Ordnance survey map shows a short stub of the branch, connecting to the Seymour and Speedwell Branch railway, by 1898 a railway siding had replaced it, leaving just a basin at the junction to serve the gasworks.[19] Another private branch was built in 1840, which crossed the Norbriggs road at Netherthorpe to serve the Speedwell Colliery. It was built by the Barrows, who also owned Staveley ironworks, but by 1860 had been replaced by a railway.[20]

By 1789, the company had spent a total of £152,400, raised through shares and by mortgages. Income for the year was £8,320, and after interest payments had been met, that left a net profit of £2,780, enabling them to make their first dividend payment of one per cent. 74,312 tons of traffic were carried that year, of which 42,380 tons were coal, with the rest consisting of lead, iron, stone, corn, lime, timber and sundries.[12] Dividends had risen to five per cent by 1795, were eight per cent the following year, and were six or seven percent until at least 1836. There were several suggestions for links to the River Don Navigation or the Sheffield Canal, the first in 1792 as part of the scheme to build a canal to Sheffield, and subsequently in 1824, as part of the Grand Commercial Canal, and in 1852, when a Sheffield and Chesterfield Junction Canal was proposed, but none of them moved past the planning stage.[21]

In the 1840s, Railway Mania was gripping the country, with many speculative schemes being proposed. Rather than face steady demise as the new form of transport developed, a number of the proprietors formed the Manchester & Lincoln Union Railway company in October 1845. The intention was to build a line from Liverpool to Grimsby, and to convert part of the canal into a railway. Locally, this included a line from Staveley to Gainsborough, via Worksop, with a branch to Lincoln and another from Worksop to Beighton. The previous year, the Sheffield & Lincolnshire Junction Railway had been proposed, to build a line from Sheffield to Gainsborough, and was supported by the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne & Manchester Railway. The new scheme was in direct competition to the earlier one, but the two sets of proprietors met and agreed to amalgamate. Now arguing from a position of strength, the Manchester & Lincoln Union rescinded their plans for most of their lines, and obtained an Act of Parliament on 7 August 1846 allowing them to construct a line from the Midland Railway at Staveley to the canal at Worksop. The new company amalgamated with the Chesterfield Canal, to become the rather unwieldy Manchester & Lincoln Union Railway & Chesterfield & Gainsborough Canal, with powers to further amalgamate with the Sheffield & Lincolnshire Junction Railway. However, by the time they announced this, the Sheffield & Lincolnshire Junction Railway had already become part of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, and so they amalgamated with that company instead. The Act of Parliament stated that although the canal company was to be dissolved, the entire canal was to be retained, its water supplies maintained, and tolls were to be fixed at a just level.[22]

Under the new regime, the canal was put back into good order in 1848, after many years where regular maintenance had been neglected. The benefits were immediate, with traffic increasing as a result.[23] Over 200,000 tons were carried in 1848, the highest recorded total.[24] The railway company started to operate as a carrier on the canal, and to maintain water levels, the reservoirs at Chesterfield were enlarged in 1856. Traffic levels were holding up in 1858, despite fierce competition from the London and North Western Railway. However, the owners considered options for converting the canal from Kiverton Park to Chesterfield into a railway in 1872, 1873 and 1884, but on each occasion, the plans were shelved.[23] The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway was expanding, and an Act of Parliament was obtained in 1889, which allowed them to divert parts of the canal to enable a new railway connecting Chesterfield, Staveley and Beighton to be constructed. The new route was straighter than the old, and reduced the length of the canal by around ¹⁄₂ mile (0.8 km). The Beighton to Staveley section of the new railway opened on 1 December 1891, and reached Chesterfield on 4 June 1892. The railway's carrying business on this and other canals ceased shortly afterwards.[25] The original route of the canal at Hague Lane was largely destroyed by the construction of the railway and Renishaw Central station, but further north, the section around Chapel Wheel Forge and Dam is still clearly visible, and reinstatement of it as part of a restored canal was considered but rejected on practical grounds.[26] Close to Bluebank Lock, the railway, known as the Great Central Railway Chesterfield Loop, turned to the east and passed to the south of Staveley Iron Works to reach Staveley Town station. Prior to construction of this section, the canal looped to the north around the iron works, passing through Cinderhill Lock before turning south-eastwards. The canal was re-routed along the southern edge of the works, and the railway crossed over at Staveley Works station, almost on top of a new lock which was known as Staveley Works Lock or Hollingwood Lock.[27]

Parts of the canal above Worksop were affected by subsidence from local coal mines. By 1905, traffic had dropped to 45,177 tons, of which around 15,000 tons were coal and 11,000 were bricks. Some 40 boats were still working on the canal, although a short section between Staveley and Chesterfield had become unnavigable. The canal was making a loss, with receipts of £1,837 and expenditure of £3,883 in 1905. The largest drain on resources was the Norwood Tunnel, where £21,000 had been spent since 1871, in an attempt to repair damage and raise the roof.[20] However, on 18 October 1907 there was a further substantial collapse, and the tunnel was closed. Effectively, the canal above Worksop became redundant. Responsibility for the canal passed the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) in 1923, who carried out regular maintenance, and repaired and enlarged the lock connecting West Stockwith basin to the River Trent between 1923 and 1925. Various attempts to reduce the growth of weed, which had first appeared on the canal in 1852, were made, with variable success, and there was a brisk trade in munitions during the Second World War. The last serious commercial traffic on the canal was the carriage of bricks from Walkeringham to West Stockwith, which ended in 1955, although there was a small trade in warp, a fine silt dredged from the Trent at the mouth of the River Idle, and used by the cutlery trade in Sheffield for polishing metal, which lasted into the early 1960s.[24] Parts of the isolated section from the tunnel to Chesterfield were infilled and redeveloped.

Mill Green Bridge was the head of navigation of the western section prior to the opening of Staveley Basin in early 2012.

Restoration had focussed initially on the route east from Norwood Tunnel to Worksop, which presented relatively few physical obstacles to being restored to navigation. However, in practice progress had been slow, and attention turned to the section west of Norwood Tunnel, where much more damage had been done to the canal bed, with it being filled in and built over in many places. This included the construction of housing at Killamarsh in the 1970s, which went ahead despite protests. However, parts of the channel had survived remarkably well in places, as it had been used to supply water to the iron industry, and maintained by a team with a boat until the 1950s.[41] The last few miles of the canal, from Chesterfield to Staveley, were in reasonable condition, although the towpath was overgrown and difficult to access, while much of the route was under threat from opencast coal mining and a planned bypass, which had first been proposed in 1927. Regular workparties began the process of restoration in 1988, organised by the Chesterfield Canal Society, and supplemented by volunteers from the Waterway Recovery Group periodically. Tapton lock was the first to be reopened, in 1990. Derbyshire County Council acquired the section of canal between Chesterfield and Staveley and secured derelict land grants to enable dredging and towpath maintenance to take place. A campaign to ensure that once all the coal had been extracted from the opencast mine, the canal would be reinstated was successful. Two lowered bridges had been rebuilt by June 2001, and Cow Lane Bridge followed in May 2002. Four more locks were restored, with the 5-mile (8 km) section from Chesterfield being reopened to navigation in 2002.[42]

In a separate development, a private owner of a length of the canal near Boiley Farm, Killamarsh, obtained a Derelict Land Grant to enable him to restore around 550 yards (500 m) of the channel in 1992.[43] Although used as fishing ponds, the work resulted in a navigable profile being re-established, and a water supply was obtained from a small unnamed brook, which feeds into the southern end of the ponds. An earth bund at the site of the former Gallas footbridge divides the channel into two ponds, and carries a public footpath.[44] In 1997, the Chesterfield Canal Trust was formed, as a limited company with charitable aims, and took over the assets of the Canal Society in 1998.[45]

A breach in the canal in March 2007, caused by the collapse of a culvert carrying the Tinkersick Brook under the canal, forced temporary closure of all but the top pound above Tapton Lock for about six weeks.[46] Near the site of the former Renishaw Iron Foundry, which closed in 1992 and was subsequently redeveloped for housing, a length of canal was reexcavated in 2007–08. The work included the new Renishaw Foundry footbridge (18a), which connects the housing to green space and a play area on the bank of the canal, and deep piling where an embankment originally carried the canal over the Smithy Brook.[47] The development of the site ceased in 2010, when there were issues with ownership of the land.[48] Since then, there have been issues with vandalism, and the lack of a natural water supply has been a continuing problem.[49]

Over the winter of 2010–11, the Canal Trust obtained its first permanent base, when the lock house at Hollingwood Lock was renovated and a large extension added to the rear. The building, which is known as the Hollingwood Hub, was funded by a grant from Community Assets, part of the government's Office for Civil Society, and provides offices for the Trust, a meeting room and a coffee shop. The ecology of the area was improved by the planting of 450 trees, provided by the Woodland Trust, in November 2011.[50]

The next big advance was the opening of some 660 yards (600 m) of canal beyond Mill Green Bridge, and the construction of a new mooring basin at Staveley, which was completed in early 2012. Funding for the basin was provided by Derbyshire County Council with a grant from the East Midlands Development Agency, and the work which included the reclamation of the surrounding land, won an award from the Institute of Civil Engineers, given jointly to Derbyshire and the contractors NT Killingley.[51] The work was aided by a road-building scheme for a new Staveley Bypass, which enabled two bridges to be raised and a third to be built, all with sufficient clearance for navigation.[52]

A map of the canal at Staveley in 1898, showing the locations of the Mineral Line bridge and modern basin.

Progress beyond Staveley Basin was hampered by a railway bridge. The first bridge over the canal in this location was further to the east, and was erected in the 1850s, when the canal arm to Speedwell Colliery was filled in, to be converted to a railway. The Staveley Ironworks railway system was sold to the Midland Railway in the 1870s, who built a replacement line and bridge, to ease the sharpness of the curve. This area has suffered from subsidence, so when the canal was formally abandoned, the twin-track iron bow girder bridge was removed and the canal was filled in. A combination of the subsidence, and the use of a deep ballast base to enable tracks to be carried straight over any new bridge has reduced the available headroom by 7 feet 5 inches (2.25 m). The solution adopted to overcome this was the construction of a dropped pound, with a new Staveley Town Lock (5a) immediately to the north of Staveley Basin to lower the level of the canal, and Railway Lock (5b) constructed just beyond the railway bridge. A syphon will maintain the water supply to the canal beyond the dropped pound.[53] Staveley Town Lock was completed just in time for the Inland Waterways Association National Trailboat Festival, which was held at Staveley over the bank holiday weekend in late May 2016.[54]

The first boat passed through the lock on 26 May, and it was officially opened on 28 May. However, once the festival was over, a clay bund had been reinstated above the lock by 16 June, and the pound below it drained, in order to allow work to continue on the weir and spillway which carries excess water back to the River Rother. Although the track on the mineral line has been removed, its route may be reused to provide access to a maintenance depot, for the High Speed 2 (HS2) railway project. On 1 October 2017, the Trust received permission from Network Rail to investigate the bridge remains, and the infill was removed over the next few days.[55]

A new bridge under construction at Staveley Basin, to carry the A6192 link road to Junction 29A of the M1 over the new canal channel

The southern end of the canal in Chesterfield is being redeveloped as part of a £300 million project called Chesterfield Waterside. This will provide housing and amenities in an area which is currently derelict land. The project involves the creation of a short length of new canal to create an island in the centre of the site, navigation being restored to a length of the river, and a new basin at the southern edge of the site. Funding for the canal work was provided by a grant of £500,000 from the East Midlands Development Agency.[56] The basin was completed and was opened in October 2009, although it remains isolated from the River Rother, to which it will be connected by a lock, while a back-pumping facility will supply it with water. Outline planning permission for the whole site was granted on 15 March 2010.[57] In April 2012, the project was awarded a £2.4 million grant by the Sheffield City Region Local Enterprise Partnership Board. The funding was for the connecting lock and the provision of sewers and access roads, to facilitate the subsequent development of the 62-acre (25 ha) site.[58]

With the canal open from West Stockwith to the eastern portal of Norwood Tunnel, and from Chesterfield to Staveley, there were less than 9 miles (14 km) left to be restored by 2017. Whereas most of the work so far had involved restoration of the existing channel, this section includes some significant engineering challenges, with completely new construction needed to bypass the housing estate in Killamarsh, built over the original line in the 1970s, and the replacement of Norwood Tunnel with an alternative route. The Chesterfield Canal Partnership, an association of local and regional authorities, including the Chesterfield Canal Trust and other interested parties, have produced detailed plans for all of the work required to reinstate the missing section.[59]

In 2004, the engineers Jacobs-Babtie examined six possible routes for the canal through Killamarsh. Of these, two were reasonably feasible, and were named Central Line East and Central Line West.[60] At the time, the eastern route was felt to be the best option, and consultation with residents resulted in that route being included in the North East Derbyshire Local Plan. However, subsequent detailed design suggests that this may no longer be the best route.[61] Redevelopment of the Tarran Bungalows site to the west of the village provided opportunities to reassess the western route, and it has gained support, as it would be more attractive for boaters, allowing them to access the village more readily. This route would also be considerably cheaper to construct that the eastern route.[62] Both routes drop down into Nethermoor Lake, part of the Rother Valley Country Park and will ascend from the far side to regain the original course.[61]

It will not be possible to reopen the Norwood Tunnel, as several sections have collapsed, the National Coal Board filled in some sections to stabilise the land above it, and when the M1 motorway was built, the tunnel below it was injection grouted, to ensure there would not be a subsequent collapse. The engineers Arup considered options for this section in 2007, proposing a route running largely on the surface, and crossing the site of the Kiveton Park Colliery, which closed in 1994. It involved an extra six locks at the top of the Norwood flight of 13 locks, passing under the motorway by using a farm underpass, and then descending through another six new locks, to enter the final 460 yards (420 m) of the tunnel.[63] However, announcement of the revised route for the HS2 railway has resulted in other options being reconsidered. One is for a short tunnel at the western end, starting at the existing western portal, but heading in a different direction. The tunnel would be some 660 yards (600 m) long, passing under the route of HS2 and the M1 motorway, allowing HS2 to be constructed without interfering with navigation. The scheme would save the need to construct six locks, and engineers were assessing the cost of such a scheme in late 2017.[64]

In 2012 the UK Government's announcement of the preferred route for the HS2 rail line extension to Leeds indicated that the line would conflict with the planned restoration of the Canal in several places. The Chesterfield Canal Trust campaigned to have the needs of the Canal taken into account during the consultation process. The July 2017 announcement on the phase 2b route to be developed removed blight from the canal route.[65]