Book Looks Back to the Golden Age of Canals

The black and white image says everything about the decline and fall of two important forms of transport. In the foreground, a safety fence that protected the Great Northern Railway line near Awsworth stands broken and neglected. A bar is missing, a concrete post crumbles dangerously. Below runs the Nottingham Canal which is in an equally sorry state. Patches of reed grow in the shallows and the once crisp and neatly cut bank has begun to invade the waters.On one side lies the decaying remains of a butty barge, once used to carry coal from the shallow mines of Awsworth, Shilo and Bennerley. The year of the photograph is 1975, long after the canal and the railway line were abandoned, no longer seen as viable commercial enterprises.

The photograph is one of more than 100 included in a new Notts County Council publication in the popular Turning Back The Pages series, which is this time looking at the history of Nottinghamshire canals. Compiled by Ray and Joanne Bickel, it begins with the Nottingham Canal which, for a few brief years in the early 1800s, was something of a gold mine for its owners. In 1839, the receipts tallied £12,895. Today that would be worth around £1m. The canal was built in the late 18th Century by William Jessop for a group of prominent Nottingham businessmen to link the city, and its commercial wharves on the River Trent, with Langley Mill to serve collieries and quarries along the route. It was a major undertaking, covering more than 14 miles with 19 locks and 34 bridges, at a cost of around £80,000 (£7.2m). It was opened in 1796 and business boomed. Producers along the route were able to get material out much faster than before. The age of the canal was a major step forward in England's industrial revolution. But it was short-lived. As the canal business reached its peak in 1839, along came the railways and within five years, receipts had plummeted. The canal was bought by the Ambergate and Manchester Railway and struggled along for the next few decades, but by the turn of the 20th century, trade was negligible. The canal became neglected, traffic ceased and in 1937 it was finally abandoned.

The book remembers notable incidents from the canal's past, especially the tragic accident in 1818 when a boatman dropped a hot clinker onto a leaking store of gunpowder. The ensuing explosion killed eight men and two boys. According to the authors, it was said that a boatman was flung 100 yards across the canal by the blast. And a rare photograph from 1860 shows a sail barge moored in the shadow of Nottingham Castle. The wharves disappeared from the city landscape in 1884 when they were filled in during the construction of Castle Boulevard. Today, only a short section of the Nottingham Canal survives intact, from Meadow Lane Lock to Lenton, where it joins the Beeston Cut. Narrowboats still cruise through, but mainly for pleasure, and the view across what were once open fields, has changed beyond all recognition.

The fascinating book also looks at the history of other important waterways including the Beeston Cut, the Grantham Canal and the Chesterfield Canal. At a launch ceremony held at the County Archives in Castle Meadow Road, County Councillor John Cottee, cabinet member for culture and community, said: "This is a wonderful opportunity for people to learn about canals and how important they were to British history. "They revolutionised the transportation of goods long before we had cars and lorries."

From: http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/news/Book-looks-golden-age-canals/article-3048610-detail/article.html

Turning Back The Pages on Nottinghamshire Canals, Compiled by Ray and Joanne Bickel, Notts County Council publication ISBN: 978-0-902751-66-8 Paperback 56 pages Price £3.95 (plus £3.00 p&p) at: http://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/home/leisure/libraries/libraries-publications.htm