The Buckingham Canal Society

Travelling down the tidal River Trent our first diversion was onto the Chesterfield Canal at West Stockwith. This pleasantly rural canal currently runs for 24.5 miles to just beyond Worksop. Work is proceeding rapidly from both the eastern and western ends with the aim of fully restoring the route through to Chesterfield. We took our boat to the current end of navigation through the two recently restored Stret and Deep Locks with great delight. The gates of Deep Lock were so new and little used that the water poured out between the vertical wooden planks of the lower gates as we filled the lock to ascend. We also gathered a crowd who were curious to see this unusual event. Just round the comer the canal is currently blocked at Rhodesia by a culverted road bridge. The main difficulty here I understand is a legal rather than a practical one. A new road bridge has been built and the remaining one is only now used as an alternative access for a few houses on one side. Obviously the problem is expected to be sorted soon as there is major work taking place on re-building the next flight of locks. There is also a multimillion pound marina in the last stages of construction here

Our next adventure was the northern section of the Rochdale Canal. It leaves the Calder & Hebble Navigation at Sowery Bridge. Formerly, there were four locks here, but the top two were filled in for a road improvement scheme in the late sixties. Now a new curved tunnel takes the canal beneath the new road into the new 19'6" Tuel Lane Lock, which is the deepest in the country. Understandably there is a Lock Keeper here to operate the lock. It is quite awe inspiring as you come out of the tunnel into the lock and look up at the sky so far above. The opening of this lock in 1996 now enables access from the main canal system, currently up to the summit level near Warland. The canal climbs steadily through the Calder valley with beautiful scenery all around interspersed with "Last of the Summer Wine" grey stone houses precariously clinging to the hill sides. From the summit we treated ourselves to a walk up to the Warland Reservoir and along part of the Pennine Way.

The next twelve locks which drop the canal to Littleborough in less than two miles are useable, but come under a different authority who discourage access by keeping the top section de-watered. At Littleborough the canal runs through a culvert under a road, so this is currently the terminus. (More about the other end later in this article) We reluctantly retraced our steps onto the Calder & Hebble, making a brief visit to the small remaining section of the Halifax Canal. There are no plans to restore this canal although a footpath 'trail' follows part of the route and there are a few remaining signs of its existence.

We then took a detour to Huddersfield to look at the Huddersfield Narrow Canal. This is another major ongoing restoration. There are three serious blockages. However British Waterways and the local authorities have teamed up with the Canal Society and the award of a millennium grant means that through navigation should once more be possible.

The first blockage is in Huddersfield itself. We walked up past the first derelict lock to where, Huddersfield University have taken over the imaginatively restored warehouse buildings. A brick wall is reached beyond a bridge, with a number of obstructions over the next stretch. Again, work is afoot to remove, go through, under or circumvent these.

Returning back through Wakefield we hardly gave a glance to where the Barnsley Canal went off. But again, there is a Canal Society eagre to restore this. At Castleford Junction we turned left onto the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Until the Rochdale and the Huddersfield Narrow Canals are fully open this is the only Canal which takes you up over the Pennines (and it really is beautiful) and down the other side to Wigan. There we joined the Bridgewater Canal into Manchester.

In the central Castlefield area much has been done to preserve some of the important buildings as well as large modern buildings being introduced. Here we meet the other end of the Rochdale Canal, which rises by nine locks to join with the Ashton Canal, another restoration success story. I won't say too much about the trip up the nine, except that we paid the princely sum of £30 to travel up the most unsavoury and difficult to operate locks we have experienced on the whole system. Although the Rochdale Canal Society have been working on restoring the canal not far from this junction, we decided to press on as quickly as we could along the Ashton Canal (you are warned to travel early in the morning and out of school holidays here to avoid trouble!) to Ashton-under-Lyne where the Huddersfield Narrow Canal joins. To our pleasant surprise the guidebooks were well out of date and it is now possible to travel a couple of miles to the current head of navigation this end at Staley Wharf, Stalybridge. There is a pleasant basin here where we stayed the night - the only boat there. In the morning a group of school children arrived with chairs and drawing boards and were disappointed to find that we were about to leave. This was the second time their teacher had rushed them out to draw/paint the unusual sight of a narrow boat on the mooring and had been unlucky on that occasion as well.

We backtracked and turned onto the Peak Forest Canal which, for my money, leads to one of the most beautiful areas accessible by canal. At Marple the canal rises through 16 locks (again thanks to hard working restorers). At the top we went straight on to Whaley Bridge, the terminus of the Peak Forest Canal. From here there used to be an inclined plane (now a footpath) belonging to the High Peak Railway. Not far from here are Buxworth Basins - another major restoration project. These were linked by a plate tramway to the great limestone quarries at Doveholes. The stone was brought down to Buxworth and transhipped into waiting canal boats. Initial work is so far advanced that BW were building a sanitary station (or should I say facilities block?) as we arrived on foot to inspect developments.

We journeyed back to Marple Junction and the well-loved and beautiful Macclesfield Canal. There is much dredging going on here and we were amazed to see the number of marinas that had sprung up since our last visit ten years previously. After leaving the boat near Macclesfield for a couple of weeks, we sadly had to make a fairly swift journey in order to arrive home before the Winter stoppages began at the beginning of November. However we did not move so swiftly that we could not spare a longing look at where the Lichfield Canal goes off at Huddlesford Junction near Tamworth. Together with the Hatherton Canal, this is another major restoration project being run by a very active Canal Society. They have made a video of progress to date and have been getting much useful publicity from the exploits of Chris Coburn on his narrowboat "Progress". Two videos have also been produced showing his trips to and from Caernarfon on the North Wales coast last year.

So it's nice to know that for us on the Buckingham Canal there are many people out there who started out in much the same way and have either achieved or are well on the way to achieving their dreams of restoration. We are not alone and have plenty of people who will help and guide us along the way to our goal, however long it takes.

	Journeys into the Unknown Jill Allison Spring 1999
During 1998 Don and I took an extended trip round the English canal system on our narrow boat "Cyrus Lily" and were able to penetrate the previously (for us) uncharted waters of the North East. On our journey we could not resist checking on the progress of various canal restoration schemes and were very heartened by what we saw. Most, if not all, have or had far more challenging barriers to navigation than the Buckingham Canal which have or are being resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Travelling down the tidal River Trent our first diversion was onto the Chesterfield Canal at West Stockwith. This pleasantly rural canal currently runs for 24.5 miles to just beyond Worksop. Work is proceeding rapidly from both the eastern and western ends with the aim of fully restoring the route through to Chesterfield. We took our boat to the current end of navigation through the two recently restored Stret and Deep Locks with great delight. The gates of Deep Lock were so new and little used that the water poured out between the vertical wooden planks of the lower gates as we filled the lock to ascend. We also gathered a crowd who were curious to see this unusual event. Just round the comer the canal is currently blocked at Rhodesia by a culverted road bridge. The main difficulty here I understand is a legal rather than a practical one. A new road bridge has been built and the remaining one is only now used as an alternative access for a few houses on one side. Obviously the problem is expected to be sorted soon as there is major work taking place on re-building the next flight of locks. There is also a multimillion pound marina in the last stages of construction here Our next adventure was the northern section of the Rochdale Canal. It leaves the Calder & Hebble Navigation at Sowery Bridge. Formerly, there were four locks here, but the top two were filled in for a road improvement scheme in the late sixties. Now a new curved tunnel takes the canal beneath the new road into the new 19'6" Tuel Lane Lock, which is the deepest in the country. Understandably there is a Lock Keeper here to operate the lock. It is quite awe inspiring as you come out of the tunnel into the lock and look up at the sky so far above. The opening of this lock in 1996 now enables access from the main canal system, currently up to the summit level near Warland. The canal climbs steadily through the Calder valley with beautiful scenery all around interspersed with "Last of the Summer Wine" grey stone houses precariously clinging to the hill sides. From the summit we treated ourselves to a walk up to the Warland Reservoir and along part of the Pennine Way. The next twelve locks which drop the canal to Littleborough in less than two miles are useable, but come under a different authority who discourage access by keeping the top section de-watered. At Littleborough the canal runs through a culvert under a road, so this is currently the terminus. (More about the other end later in this article) We reluctantly retraced our steps onto the Calder & Hebble, making a brief visit to the small remaining section of the Halifax Canal. There are no plans to restore this canal although a footpath 'trail' follows part of the route and there are a few remaining signs of its existence. We then took a detour to Huddersfield to look at the Huddersfield Narrow Canal. This is another major ongoing restoration. There are three serious blockages. However British Waterways and the local authorities have teamed up with the Canal Society and the award of a millennium grant means that through navigation should once more be possible. The first blockage is in Huddersfield itself. We walked up past the first derelict lock to where, Huddersfield University have taken over the imaginatively restored warehouse buildings. A brick wall is reached beyond a bridge, with a number of obstructions over the next stretch. Again, work is afoot to remove, go through, under or circumvent these. Returning back through Wakefield we hardly gave a glance to where the Barnsley Canal went off. But again, there is a Canal Society eagre to restore this. At Castleford Junction we turned left onto the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Until the Rochdale and the Huddersfield Narrow Canals are fully open this is the only Canal which takes you up over the Pennines (and it really is beautiful) and down the other side to Wigan. There we joined the Bridgewater Canal into Manchester. In the central Castlefield area much has been done to preserve some of the important buildings as well as large modern buildings being introduced. Here we meet the other end of the Rochdale Canal, which rises by nine locks to join with the Ashton Canal, another restoration success story. I won't say too much about the trip up the nine, except that we paid the princely sum of £30 to travel up the most unsavoury and difficult to operate locks we have experienced on the whole system. Although the Rochdale Canal Society have been working on restoring the canal not far from this junction, we decided to press on as quickly as we could along the Ashton Canal (you are warned to travel early in the morning and out of school holidays here to avoid trouble!) to Ashton-under-Lyne where the Huddersfield Narrow Canal joins. To our pleasant surprise the guidebooks were well out of date and it is now possible to travel a couple of miles to the current head of navigation this end at Staley Wharf, Stalybridge. There is a pleasant basin here where we stayed the night - the only boat there. In the morning a group of school children arrived with chairs and drawing boards and were disappointed to find that we were about to leave. This was the second time their teacher had rushed them out to draw/paint the unusual sight of a narrow boat on the mooring and had been unlucky on that occasion as well. We backtracked and turned onto the Peak Forest Canal which, for my money, leads to one of the most beautiful areas accessible by canal. At Marple the canal rises through 16 locks (again thanks to hard working restorers). At the top we went straight on to Whaley Bridge, the terminus of the Peak Forest Canal. From here there used to be an inclined plane (now a footpath) belonging to the High Peak Railway. Not far from here are Buxworth Basins - another major restoration project. These were linked by a plate tramway to the great limestone quarries at Doveholes. The stone was brought down to Buxworth and transhipped into waiting canal boats. Initial work is so far advanced that BW were building a sanitary station (or should I say facilities block?) as we arrived on foot to inspect developments. We journeyed back to Marple Junction and the well-loved and beautiful Macclesfield Canal. There is much dredging going on here and we were amazed to see the number of marinas that had sprung up since our last visit ten years previously. After leaving the boat near Macclesfield for a couple of weeks, we sadly had to make a fairly swift journey in order to arrive home before the Winter stoppages began at the beginning of November. However we did not move so swiftly that we could not spare a longing look at where the Lichfield Canal goes off at Huddlesford Junction near Tamworth. Together with the Hatherton Canal, this is another major restoration project being run by a very active Canal Society. They have made a video of progress to date and have been getting much useful publicity from the exploits of Chris Coburn on his narrowboat "Progress". Two videos have also been produced showing his trips to and from Caernarfon on the North Wales coast last year. So it's nice to know that for us on the Buckingham Canal there are many people out there who started out in much the same way and have either achieved or are well on the way to achieving their dreams of restoration. We are not alone and have plenty of people who will help and guide us along the way to our goal, however long it takes.
Back to top of this page Back to Archive Index Back to BCS Home Page
Website design by Jeremy Cooper at oliomedia

Journeys into the Unknown