'174' February 2008

Following the great excitement that we had secured funding for our new Blackbrook House at Bugsworth Basin we were brought down to earth with a sizeable jolt because we found the site where we planned the new building was fraught with difficulty. Not only was the ground made up with all sorts of different material of indeterminate age and stability but the closeness of the Blackbrook River retaining wall suggested that placing a building of that size so close to the wall would not be a good idea at all. There was also the issue of safety both from the point of view of our visitors and users but also for the handling of the refuse wagons which have to negotiate a narrow track and turn round. The turning area was inadequate. Although we knew the ground was suspect from the drillings and core samples carried out as part of the planning stage for the leak repairs closer examination and review lead to all parties agreeing that an alternative site would be required.

At several meetings the IWPS, English Heritage and British Waterways have had ‘barnstorming sessions’ where we came to the conclusion that although we have a very large site there are very few options for this much needed new facility. Preparations are now in hand for the appointment of an architect to design a new building to a brief agreed between the IWPS and British Waterways. A preferred site has been selected but having had one false start I don’t want to announce this actual site yet until such time as we are further down the road of site investigations etc.

The last meeting comprising representatives of British Waterways, English Heritage, High Peak Borough Council Planning Department with Don Baines and myself representing the IWPS was held on site on a bitterly cold day on 6th February 2008. Everybody was of the opinion that the new building is desperately needed and everybody supports the project. There will be more problems ahead and it is extremely unlikely now that we will meet the target opening of Easter 2009. All parties will be looking for an innovative design which will be within the parameters discussed with English Heritage and not necessarily reflect the historic architecture of original structures. One of the problems is that stone replica buildings are very expensive. They may look nice and satisfy the purists but they will not give us as much space per pound as a non-replica building. Funders always look for value for money and for a facility which will satisfy, entertain and give pleasant recreational experiences for the maximum number of people. Multi purpose use and potential is very important. We are looking for a building which will actually be used for the maximum amount of time.

The funding for the new Blackbrook House is still secure and was secured because we had a scheme ‘on the shelf’ ready to go. British Waterways and the IWPS working in partnership slotted in to a very tight time table for which bids were requested. There is no doubt because we had a project ready, and we convinced the East Midlands Development Agency that this really was a project which would succeed, we got the funding. Members should be aware that this delay may be a disappointment but already we are starting to see actual advantages in the prospective new site. We have lost nothing only, perhaps, time.

The preparations for the improvement of the towpath from Whaley Bridge in to Bugsworth Basin, plans for a trip boat between the two Basins, the upgrading the of the Horse Tunnel and the completion of the Bugsworth Basin interpretation project are all going ahead. New interpretation for Whaley Bridge Basin and the Warehouse are also in hand. Contact has been made with Tesco and the improved access from the towpath via the steps and disabled ramp to the store will be built in to the work. This will bring to a conclusion a long running dispute between Tesco, BW and the local users. It is a dispute which has not been easy to resolve. When the new access is completed we hope that will be the end of the matter and everybody will be happy. Well, we hope so.

All in all progress is being made. We are very busy working with all the parties planning what will bring, without doubt, huge improvements for the benefit of everybody.

I am sorry to say that there has been far less work completed than I had hoped would be the case. The painting of the steel railings has not been possible because of the almost constant rain and dampness. Leak repairs have not been concluded due, so I am told, to lack of British Waterways resources to actually get on site and do the job. The new stop planks are in across the leaking arm but the flow of water through the planks and into the arm is only slightly less than the leaks through the walls. The consequence of this is that the water level in the arm is only a few inches (if that) below the level of the Basin proper. My suggestion that BW ‘pull the plug’ and let the water go to the River cannot be implemented, so I am told, because the fish would be lost. The very fact that the planks are in, what fish that were there are now dead (as instanced by the bloated corpses floating in the arm) because there is nothing on which they can feed on in what is, in effect, a concrete tank. It does seem rather bizarre to me that BW in Partnership with the IWPS and others are about to spend around Ł700,000 on Bugsworth Basin as a destination site whilst, at the same time, BW alone (and BW alone are responsible for and can repair the leaks) cannot solve this long standing problem due to a disastrous amount of ‘red tape’. I hope I have better news to report in the next issue of ‘174’.

I am pleased to announce the arrival of a new tipping trailer which can be towed behind our Kubota tractor mower. This will enable us to access almost everywhere on site. A carrying capacity of one tonne and a hand-operated hydraulic ram for accurate tipping, means easy unloading and shovelling at a higher level for the ageing volunteers. This trailer replaces our also ageing dumper which is now very much time-expired and could not be brought up to modern reliable standards. This dumper, with the two others we have in store, will now be sold. The volunteers started with one dumper, we rose to 11 at the height of the muck shifting, and we ended up with one dumper. That is the end of an era and progresses our policy of replacing all obsolete plant and ‘buying new’. I am indebted to The Peak Forest Canal Co. and to the efforts of Gordon and Linda Anderson as the sales team for placing the IWPS in such a favourable position that we can purchase such plant and equipment. Another item recently bought with funds earned and donated by the PFCC was a bottle gas fuelled weed burner which makes short work of the dry and dead weeds following an application of ‘Roundup’.

I am sorry to say that we have suffered wanton vandalism to our trees on at least two occasions. Mature trees have been cut down with a chain saw, presumably for logs. These trees were mature and specially planted to hide and screen Silk Hill Bridge over the Bypass from the Basin. The damage is severe but for one particular tree, the culprit has been so inept that he has dropped one tree across another so it is ‘trapped’. This miscreant has no logs and we have a dead tree which one way or another we will have to clear. We have now fenced off the area with posts and barbed wire and put up notices just in case the culprit does return for some more and we can appeal to his better nature. Graffiti we can handle easily, malicious damage to stone walls is a bit more difficult, other damage is repairable but felling of mature and healthy trees at a wonderful scenic site like Bugsworth Basin is inexcusable.

The new information pack dispenser detailed in the last ‘174’ is now completed, shot blasted and painted and now awaits the sign writing. Hopefully the box and other leaflet boxes throughout the Basin will be erected shortly.

The new railings for Bridges 58 & 59 have now been completed and painted by British Waterways and an excellent strong job they have made of these too. Due to the bad weather and the need for the BW joiners to go to another maintenance job, painting of the upper rails has had to be postponed until the good weather returns. I am looking for a volunteer (or volunteers) to do this job. It should take only a couple of hours of careful work to complete the job. Please telephone me if you can help.

As spring approaches and the grass and weeds grow, we will be holding week-day work parties so if you can help please telephone me. We are also looking for volunteers to open and man the shop either during the week or at week-ends. This is a very pleasant task and its not onerous. You can go at your own pace as long as you can work to a procedure for accounting purposes etc. As we go to our new building and take on a more sedentary role as Bugsworth Basin volunteers (rather than, for instance, working with big machines digging the mud out of the channel) we will need a rota of volunteers to ‘meet and greet’ boaters as well as give a welcome to our on-foot visitors and hopefully take their money for drinks, ice cream, souvenirs etc. If you would like to get the satisfaction of doing this for as many or as few hours as you would like, in an idyllic and warm (usually!) setting please contact me now. Now that we have the funding for our new building we have not only to deliver it but we have to make it work. I need to build up a list of members, non-members, groups, couples or whatever who would like to help now or when the new building is completed in 2009. I am not looking for a firm commitment now but just an indication that you would like to consider being a part of a friendly team working at and for Bugsworth Basin. I look forward to hearing from you.

The walks programme goes from strength to strength with seemingly new people joining all the time which makes for a diverse and pleasant group. There is no charge for the walks and you do not have to be an IWPS member to attend (although we would prefer you are a member!). If you want to be added to the mailing list (either by e-mail or snail mail) then please let me know. My address is on the inside front cover of this issue of ‘174’.

Obituary: Mr. Charles Albert Gordon Johnson 30th March 1927-10th January 2008

It is with sadness that I find myself, writing this tribute to a great friend of 33 years. The last time Gordon and I spoke was just before Christmas and beside his hospital bed. As always, he was optimistic, upbeat and funny. Alas it was to be the final struggle, bravely faced and never to be forgotten, not least because of his happy smile, for all who came to visit.

We talked about our first meeting at the basin in spring 1975. At the time, Anthony, his elder son, was studying at Normanton, a boarding school in Buxton. Gordon and Mavis as parents, together with younger son, Richard, often collected Anthony for “approved” activities during the weekend. As lovers of the open air, they found themselves inspecting a certain canal restoration. Ian Edgar, a young Liverpudlian, had recently taken over the job of Honorary Site Manager.

“Ian is an inspiration,” Gordon later said, so he took no persuading to join a group of twenty or more volunteers. Many trades and professions were represented among the people involved. More to the point, there were three sets of parents, each accompanied by a child or children: the Smiths, the Hawkins and the Whiteheads. Mavis immediately discovered a namesake, Mavis Whitehead, the coincidence extending to a second Anthony of hers and even another, whose surname was Hawkins!

Meanwhile, Gordon and their Anthony became serious canal enthusiasts and straight away busied themselves, filling the bucket under a small motorized crane that went by the name of Boadicea. The job for today was to clear the canal margin, along the edge of the Central Peninsula and near to where the memorial milestone to Denny Lomas now stands.

The Johnsons returned on several more occasions during that first year of the Edgar regime. They also introduced two classmates of Anthony’s, Mark Skinner and Chris Simons, to our dig. My best early picture, showing members of the family, finds them strung out in a line, cutting reeds and silt, from under the lee of the Gnat Hole limekilns. Then in December 1976, they are seen arranged around a 22RB dragline, brought to the basin by the civil engineering contractors, Z and W Wade. One of the first of Ian’s famous begging letters had scored a direct hit. Twenty-five volunteers, including members of the three families mentioned above, smile and shiver at the same time, around this majestic machine. Fifty yards of the channel had been cleared during the previous week, at three-quarters of a ton a bite and free of charge. Now it was the turn of the volunteers to tidy things up. Interestingly, this was also the first ever IWPS working weekend, with local accommodation on hand.

Back home in Leicester, Gordon served on the Board of the Gild of Freemen of the City of Leicester, an organisation dating back 900 years. A purchase of 7.5 acres of land by the Freemen was to be developed with bungalows, as accommodation for the elderly. Normal practice meant that most of the grounds would be grassed and mown in straight lines. Gordon thought otherwise and decided to dig a pond, create hedgerows and plant trees. Some years earlier, two acorns, thrown by Mavis out of the kitchen window into their garden, had germinated and grown into small trees. “Transplant them to the Holt,” Gordon suggested.

Thus one became “Anthony” and the other one “Richard”. Parents often record the height of their children at intervals, on a wall or doorframe in their house. Not so the Johnsons, who stood each child by his tree and took a picture every few years.

Down at the basin, our old friend, Arnold Baxter, resident of Teapot Row, once watched from Silk Hill Bridge, clutching his paper carrier bag, having just called for his groceries at the “Navvy” shop. Four Johnsons were busy, down in the bed of the canal. “It’s good to see the youngsters, taking an interest,” he shouted to Gordon, who as always led by example and replied that they tried their best to find his lads something useful to do, “to keep them off the streets!”

But usefulness sometimes proved risky. I became particularly involved with drystone walling for several years, starting in 1975. Walls required stone. Anthony at 15 wanted desperately to drive. He sat on the seat of our old Thwaites dumper and I explained the various controls. With barely a crunch of the gearbox, he moved away and soon drove like an expert. Often we filled the dumper with stone and he brought it to the wall. Unfortunately on one particular trip, the brakes failed, the dumper went over into the dry channel and Anthony found himself [I quote], “lying on the bed and looking up at one of the wheels!”

These were days, long before health and safety regulations and assessments of risk came into force. All of us had personal tales of some near squeak or other to tell. Now it was Anthony’s turn. Surely Gordon would explode with rage and drag his son away from Bugsworth forever? But no, he ran forward, dusted the lad down and said he ought to do something less dangerous! Meanwhile, Ian proclaimed to all others present, “No more driving of dumpers by under-age volunteers!”

Visiting Gordon that last time, sitting with Anthony and his Australian wife, Bev and Gordon’s wonderful partner of these latter years, Pat Geary, Anthony and I laughed at the thought that I had nearly killed him!

Would-be disaster could be seen in another light, however. Like his father, Anthony loved the outdoors. His joy was to drive across the outback, or thankless situations like the Gibson Desert. Land Rovers “Down Under” were his professional life. He had even changed a gearbox out in the bush, after digging a hole under the vehicle concerned. So much of this, he put down to the white-knuckle days of Bugsworth Basin.

Just to be here in the UK and with his father and Pat, they had driven a Land Rover, assembled by Anthony from spare parts in his Victoria shed. The route lay across South Korea, China, Mongolia, Russia and Europe. The journey began in June 2007, before Gordon began to ail. They made it to Leicester in October and stayed beside him throughout the last days, together with Pat who put them up in her house for the duration. Gordon was so proud as he spoke to Ian Edgar and me of this feat of long-distance navigation by the youngsters but laughed out loud with the words, “And they even sold the Land Rover on eBay and made enough for their airfare home!”

I have used the word “father” in several places so far but Anthony always called him Gordon, as in the phrase, often heard in the Bull’s Head, Kettleshulme, during the work camps, which occurred every summer for fifteen further years from 1976: “It’s your round this time, Gordon!”

Back in the early 1980s, Gordon and I found ourselves, emptying silt from dumpers on what had become known as the Caravan Field, right beside the famous First Hundred Yards of the Entrance Canal, near where the restoration had been started by Bessie and John Bunker in September 1968. The subject of Freemen’s Holt cropped up and how the planting of trees did so much to improve the environment. My first degree lay in plant science but here was someone, who otherwise worked as a property surveyor, being far more practical than I was.

The whole Bugsworth project has always been as much about collecting ideas from others and putting them into action, as about restoring the canal. Cutting a long story short and looking across at that “dead” piece of land between the A6 bypass and the Entrance Basin in 1986, the thought flashed through my mind, “Why not plant trees on it?” And this was done, mostly with free trees, donated by friends, or simply with saplings “found” elsewhere, all in the tradition of those acorn sprouts, taken to Freemen’s Holt.

People always seemed to relax in Gordon’s company, the bedside being a case in point. When something went wrong, he always remained unflappable. Down at the basin, the rest of us might yell, argue and swear at each other but Gordon would see through the difficulties and tension, and just smile. The description, a complete English gentleman, springs to mind.

This is not to say that he never faced other far more serious situations in his personal life. At one stage, his own successful business collapsed, through no fault of his own. He lost almost everything in financial terms, looked desperately for work to support his young family and was fortunate enough to find a post with Leicester City Council. That being said, the worst disaster of all involved the tragic loss of Mavis in 1991, in a horse riding accident that no one could have foreseen.

Never did I hear him complain. We kept in fairly regular touch and caught up with each other’s lives, especially during the joyous work camps, later to be run by the Waterway Recovery Group up at the basin. These occurred over three years from 1989 to 1991, under the inspired leadership of Neil Edwards and Mick Beatty. To anyone, looking in from the outside, this duo might have seemed like chalk and cheese but together they achieved a rare degree of perfection. The Johnsons and the rest of us in the IWPS will never forget such days.

For two of these camps, the recently wed Anthony and Bev returned from Australia. Anthony put his increasing range of talents into driving an excavator; one of the jobs being to clear the notorious landslip from the new bypass sound bank into the Entrance Canal. Not to be outdone, Bev helped elsewhere in every possible way, causing Gordon to speak of her as the perfect daughter-in-law.

For many years, too, Gordon regularly attended the IWPS Annual Dinner. On one such occasion and faced with a drive back to Leicester in nasty weather, he agreed to spend the night at our house. Not surprisingly, we stayed up for ages talking, despite the lateness of the hour. This did not quite match a previous marathon slide show that Anthony and I watched one “evening” until 3.00 am, when Bev and my wife, Anna, staggered off to bed at midnight, but it was still a long time.

Recently, Anna said that Gordon was the sort of person you could meet for a short time and think you had known all your life.

His later years were enhanced by visits to see “the boy” in Australia. On one of these, he was accompanied by his partner and lovely companion, Pat Geary. Pat and Gordon loved the outdoors in the now-expected tradition of things. Indeed it was Pat, who chose this fine picture of our late friend with his binoculars, taken on one of their ornithological jaunts. It was re-printed for the order of service at the funeral in Leicester and she graciously allowed us to include it here.

All of us can think of pictures we wish we had taken but for some silly reason or other did not. One of mine would be of Pat and Gordon, when Anna and I met them on the car park beside the Navigation Inn. The date was March 26, 2005, in other words what we trust was the final Bugsworth Basin re-opening day. The weather was cold and uncomfortably draughty. Indeed, the little silver band of mostly young players found it difficult to keep their instruments warm. But Gordon smiled from ear to ear. What he and his family had done at Bugsworth over so many years had come to fruition.

He must also have felt the same, when he last visited Freemen’s Holt. He had been a member of the Board for 50 years (and this is not a misprint!). His name was inscribed on two slate plates on the outside wall of the community hall. These inscriptions commemorated the two separate years, when he was elected as Chairman of the Board.

The reception after the funeral was held at Freemen’s Holt. Ruth Tiddy (previously Hawkins), Dave and Izzie Turner, Laurence Sullivan, Ian Edgar and I represented the IWPS. There I met Richard again for the first time in 32 years and we shared some happy memories of the past. All the canal enthusiasts walked around the grounds and saw the allotment that Gordon had tended for so many years, and the small wooden shed behind it that he and Anthony had built. Two of the secrets of Gordon’s for a long and productive life had been to keep physically fit and to eat a well-balanced diet. To quote Anthony again: “Gordon knew what muesli was, before anyone else could spell it!”

In one final memory of smiles, Gordon in hospital liked also to be known as Charles, first of his list of Christian names. It made him sound royal, he said; then laughed out loud, when someone suggested that some of them were pillocks!

Stockport MBC is currently working on a programme of Conservation Area boundary reviews. The Council is examining the following existing Conservation Areas, which are the subjects of a consultation exercise:

The Council considers that the boundaries of these areas should be amended and in this instance this mostly means enlarging them. Thirteen areas of the Peak Forest Canal lying between Unity Mills, Woodley, and a point just beyond Plucks Bridge, Strines, have been selected and these include Marple Aqueduct (both an Ancient Monument and Listed) and Marple Locks (all Listed).

The Society has had an opportunity to examine the thirteen areas concerned and it largely agrees with the proposed boundary changes. However, it has taken this opportunity to raise its concerns about the general condition of the Peak Forest Canal. The Society is concerned about the following points:

The Society stressed that it was important that British Waterways should be able to conduct routine maintenance of the canal without the constant need to request permission to do such work. Routine work would include:

With regard to the Macclesfield Canal, five areas were identified for boundary changes and these lie between Top Lock, Marple, and Buxton Road, High Lane. It is understood that the Macclesfield Canal Society will be making its own representations to Stockport MBC about these areas.

The Guardian’s celebration in June 2007 of its 50,000^th issue coincided with the upgrade of my email system to Broadband and the ability to make Google searches. Of course the Grauniad started as the Manchester Guardian and was then published weekly, and they had printed the front page of the 1^st issue, dated 5^th May 1821; it was all adverts as were all the broadsheets until more recent times. Of interest were 2 adverts related to properties by the Rochdale Canal, one for building and wharf land in Gt Ancoats St and Port St, and the other for premises at Gaythorn near Knot Mill and Castlefields. This last consisted of "large strong buildings … lately used as dye and bleach works" and was "abundantly supplied with water from the Rochdale Canal which is of a peculiar good quality for dyeing, bleaching and printing purposes".

But there were also 2 other adverts that set me a puzzle. Two local turnpikes had their toll bars listed for their annual auction by the Clerk of the Trustees at Glossop, and one had a name that has dropped completely from use. One turnpike was from Marple Bridge to Glossop, with 6 toll bars listed, and the other was the Chapel en le Frith to Enterclough Bridge turnpike, with toll bars at New Smithy, Hayfield, Fisher’s and Longhurst Lane. Where was Enterclough Bridge, which is not on the Dark Peak Explorer OS map for this area? New Smithy and Hayfield are obvious enough between Chapel and Glossop, but where were the others?

A friend has a "historical" neighbour who volunteered that Fisher’s Bar was by the Grouse Inn on the Hayfield to Glossop road, and Longhurst Lane is the road that climbs east out of Marple Bridge, so this was perhaps an arm of the turnpike to form a Chapel-Marple Bridge-Glossop triangle of turnpike roads. Obviously Enterclough was north of Glossop, but where? This was when I googled.

Thank heavens for those who enter all the wide-ranging information that is available for viewing on the internet. I didn’t get a precise answer right away, but a number of fascinating facts emerged. The Glossop Conservation Area document revealed that the CelF-EB turnpike was laid in 1793 (contemporary with the PF Canal) and its income funded a charity in Glossop. Some later parliamentary documents link this turnpike with the Woodhead to Holmfirth turnpike, so this would make somewhere north of Glossop and in Longdendale as the most likely site for Enterclough. The road out of Glossop would be the Woodhead Road (B6105) over to the reservoirs in Longdendale and the A628 trunk road. Best of all was a file on the Shepherds’ Society, a biannual gathering of local shepherds to sort out their flocks and no doubt for chit-chat. I have been told since that this became a mutual assurance company. The list of shepherds at the 1807 gathering at Saltersbrook House at the top of the Woodhead included two men with the name Garside from the Glossop area, one having a "liberty" at Enterclough, Longdendale. No mention of the place in the 1898 and 1921 lists, which were after the reservoirs and railway had been built in the valley.

The answer came first from our editor, Don Baines, whom I had pestered and who had found Enterclough Quarry on the 1898 OS map at the bottom of Hey Clough north of the Woodhead reservoir about ˝-way between the dam and the Holmfirth road turn-off. It is now marked as disused and without a name. I then discovered Sheet No 21 in David & Charles reprints of the first edition of the 1in OS of England and Wales, which covers Manchester & Huddersfield. This is a composite map showing plates starting from the early 1840s, and Hey Clough is marked as Enter Clough and by the Woodhead Road is Enter Clough Farm. The Woodhead reservoir must have been just built because, besides the new road across the dam, the older road is marked as continuing along the south side before entering the water and emerging on the north side. Here it formed a cross-road with the Holmfirth road as it reached the Woodhead road, where there was a tollgate. There is still a horse trough here by the wall.

I had meanwhile asked 2 others for opinions and they had both drawn a blank. Chris Makepeace at Disley thought the building of the reservoirs and the railway would have ruined all reference to the bridge. Also he felt the Holmfirth-Woodhead-Glossop-Chapel route was an old north-south drove road. Alan Roberts of Buxton and who published the Buxton Turnpikes book had seen the MG reprint and knew of the turnpike but not its endpoint. Also the Dodds book, Peakland Roads and Trackways, says the Glossop-Chapel route was on a Roman road from Melandra near Hadfield to Buxton.

Another advantage with Google is the maps facility for overhead viewing compared with "on the ground" inspections. At New Smithy near the railway viaducts north of Chapel, there is a house named "Toll Bar View", and I always thought the road layout here peculiar as the road from Chapel heads towards Chinley, yet the main road to Hayfield (A624) turns off at right-angles under the railway bridge. The satellite view makes it clear that when the railway was built it severed the turnpike, as the roads from Hayfield and Chapel lie in a straight line and there is a short street left in New Smithy. This must be the old route, much narrower than the present route under the bridge which was built when the Manchester-Derby railway came in the 1860s.

The late 1790s and early 1800s would have seen this area in the Blackbrook valley getting busy, as the building of this turnpike would have coincided with the construction of the PF tramway. The tramway might even have been burrowing through the Stodhart tunnel north of Chapel when the turnpike was being laid, perhaps as an improvement to the Bowden Lane nearby. The tramway chose to take the south side of the valley, and the later Midland line took the north side. Burdett’s map of Derbyshire of 1767 shows the track used by the turnpike heading north from Chapel, through "Stodard", Milton, New Smithy and on to Hayfield, but there is also a track east to "Lane End". This place must be Chinley as there are lanes heading away north to Ashen Clough, south to Whitehough and Brierley Green, and east to "Hill" and "Bagsworth Green". The precise lines of these tracks are debatable, as some have become metalled roads and others tracks and footpaths. But it is clear that the Midland line disrupted the roads in the locality and accounts for the right-angle bends in the road in Chinley.

The effect on Chinley of the coming of the Midland would have been similar to the Chapel bypass had it ploughed through Bugsworth Basin. Another cavalier railway was the Buxton line at Bridgemont north of Whaley Bridge, where the present A6 Manchester road and Chinley road are on either side of the line. I wonder which is the line of the original 1724 turnpike? And I wonder if building the Whaley Bridge Arm altered the line of the Buxton road through the town.

Martin Whalley has recounted his intrepid evening journeys by motorcycle in the early days of IWPS for committee meetings in Sheffield. His trip used to take him along the old route from Chapel and through Castleton, by Rushup Edge and Mam Tor. This road was actually laid out in 1819, long after the Bugsworth Basin, as an easier route for wheeled vehicles than the turnpike route up Sparrowpit, and down the Winnats. The road engineers gave up rebuilding the Mam Tor section after the road collapsed about 30 years ago; Mam Tor had a reputation as a shivering mountain which perhaps the early road engineers hadn’t heard of.

Much more research has gone into canals and railways than roads, yet all 3 systems have had their moments of supremacy. The history and relative advantages and disadvantages of canals and railways are well-known to us. But roads might seem to be less romantic than the peaceful canals and fascinating engineering of railways. They have leap-frogged over the canals and railways going from ancient trackways, footpaths and packhorse trails to metalled roads, which begin at your front door and are flexible enough for a road to reach any required destination. Telford foresaw this for roads, which was why he did not favour a railway for the line of the Macclesfield Canal, with smoking engines whether mobile or stationary. The means of power for road vehicles just had not arrived in time for him. Perhaps now we are about to see road transport be eclipsed by railways, as a means of high-speed transport of people.

Hugh Potter, Archivist for the Friends of the Cromford Canal, has asked if any members recall taking part in the IWPS's Cromford Canal 'Inspections' back in 1959 - or perhaps knows of those who did, or their relatives. The inspections were written up in great detail in Onward (the title of the "official journal of the IWPS" at the time) No 8 for December 1959 and No 9 for March 1960, and are now a valuable historical resource. He feels sure that at least one person on each of the five inspections must have had a camera with them and is keen to track down any photographs taken. The authors of the reports were L.E. Watson and P.J. Bunker, but the names of other participants are not given. Back in 1959 the canal was virtually intact, unlike today when much has sadly disappeared south of Ambergate. If those photographs still exist then they would offer a unique record of the canal in it final days. Can any members help? Hugh may be contacted on 01773 852009 or at archivist@cromfordcanal.org.uk.

The dry dock looking towards the railway viaduct and Alma Street, 27 July 2007. Photo: The Author.

In November 2007, residents of New Mills were invited to become the first in the UK to part-own a hydro-electric plant when an offer was made to buy shares in a project to harness energy from the river Goyt for the National Grid.

A modernised version of a 2000 year-old invention, the Archimedean screw, will be used to generate 260,000kWh of green, renewable energy every year, sufficient to power 70 homes. Proceeds raised from the sale of electricity would be ploughed back into the local community to fund environmental and regeneration projects.

Torrs Hydro New Mills Ltd director, Richard Body, who is also co-ordinator for High Peak Friends of the Earth, said: “This is an exciting, groundbreaking venture. It’s a fantastic opportunity and we are confident that the people of New Mills and further afield will be keen to invest.” “Every community has a role to play in tackling climate change and New Mills can do its bit by making most of the clean, safe, renewable energy right on our doorstep.”

The project was initiated by Water Power Enterprises who will manage it for Torrs Hydro in the hope that it will lead to many similar schemes being built across the UK.

A regional electricity company developed this 660kW (nominal) low-head scheme (4.4 m) at Barton Lock on the Manchester Ship Canal. This hydroelectric scheme was the first of its kind in the UK to be built on a navigable waterway used by sea-going ships.

Besides providing canal navigation to Manchester, the canal also provides fresh-water drainage for Salford and Manchester and the Canal Company has a statutory obligation to maintain this. The scheme consists of a small, horizontal semi-kaplan hydroelectric turbine designed at Newmills Hydro, Larne, County Antrim, in conjunction with Karlsbol Kraftverk of Sweden. The construction work required modification to an existing pump house, built around 1900, but this work was kept to a minimum to improve the economic viability.

The scheme works with a negligible water storage facility and the operation of the adjoining locks and the presence of rubbish in the water causes erratic flow conditions. The principal water source is the river Irwell, which supplies water to the canal. These constraints meant that the turbine control system had to be sophisticated, as it has to be responsive to adapt and operate efficiently with rapidly varying water flow.

The average annual output is some 3,200 MWh (11.52TJ) and it is estimated that it saves the following annual emissions: 914 tonnes of carbon dioxide, 55 tonnes of sulphur dioxide and 6 tonnes of nitrous oxide. The approximate annual saving of fossil fuel is: 10,919 cubic feet of gas or 393.07 tons of coal or 270.29 tons of oil.

The turbine was transported by road and sea, and by barge along the Canal.
Photo from the Newmills Hydro website
www.newmillshydro.com/barton
IWPS is not responsible for the content of external websites

Bugsworth Hydro?

We have a weir at Bugsworth - could we have a hydro-electric scheme here?

Perhaps a small-scale version of the generator could be built to power the new Blackbrook House, with any surplus sold to the National Grid and the proceeds used to finance a full-time site warden and the ongoing maintenance of the basins.

It is perhaps, something worth investigating further when we have our visitor centre in place.

Don Baines

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The carved Keystones of Marple Locks

By Peter J Whitehead

When exploring Marple locks on the Peak Forest Canal, a point should be made of looking at the keystones in the arches of the stone bridges across the tails of the lower locks. It will be observed that, rather than having plain surfaces, they are carved and some of them depict rough faces.

The most interesting of these is to be found at lock 8, which has the most human-like face. It is believed that this is the face of Thomas Brown who was first the Surveyor and then the Resident Engineer for the construction of the Peak Forest Canal. Later, he was appointed as the Consulting Engineer, initially to oversee the completion of Marple locks. His promotion was brought about when Benjamin Outram, the Consulting Engineer, resigned in circa 1801. Thomas Brown was the only person to be closely associated with the Peak Forest Canal Company from its inception in 1793 up until the time that the company was leased to the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway Company on the 25 March 1846.

The construction of Marple locks was fraught with financial problems and because of this their construction took many years to complete. As a result of this, Thomas Brown came to be disliked by the stonemasons building the locks. He undeservedly gained a bad reputation for his erratic hiring, firing and laying-off of his workforce due to circumstances that were beyond his control. In order to vent their spleens and to get their own back on Thomas Brown they carved the keystone of lock 8 in his likeness.

The keystone of the stone bridge across the tail of lock 8, reputed to be the likeness of Thomas Brown, 8 July 2007.
Photo: Peter J Whitehead

There is no corroborative evidence to prove that this is the likeness of Thomas Brown and it is left to readers to decide for themselves whether the story is true or not. However, our forebears were good enough to pass this story down to the present generation, so perhaps we should be good enough to believe that it is true.

The tradition of carving faces on the keystones of bridge arches is both ancient and widespread. Faces were sometimes carved to ward off evil spirits, a custom dating back several centuries, but other faces were carved as a mark of disrespect to someone in authority.

The keystone of the stone bridge across the tail of lock 1,
8 July 2007.
Photo: Peter J Whitehead

The most famous example of this in Britain is possibly a feature of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal in Scotland. This is the Laughin’ and Greetin’ Bridge at Glen Village. This bridge is particularly famous because both keystones bear carved faces. This bridge is close to a canal tunnel and the face on the tunnel side is crying because the contractor was forced to bore a tunnel through solid rock since a powerful landowner objected to the prospect of being able to see the canal from his house. In addition to this, a flight of 11 locks had to be built on this side of the bridge as well. This particular contractor went bankrupt. In contrast to this, the carved face on the other side of the bridge is laughing because the contractor on that side had no such problems to contend with and the work of cutting this section of the canal was considerably easier.

The keystone of the stone bridge across the tail of lock 2,
8 July 2007.
Photo: Peter J Whitehead

The keystone of the stone bridge across the tail of lock 3,
8 July 2007.
Photo: Peter J Whitehead

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After publishing the article about our walk down the Leeds and Liverpool Canal from Litherland, I received this email from a former work colleague of mine, Steve Poulton - makes interesting reading:

Hi Don,
Thanks for your email about the latest edition of '174'.
I was interested to read of your walk in Liverpool. I grew up in Litherland in the late 1940s and 1950s, and still have family there. I used to live on Linacre road which runs parallel to the canal and branches off Bridge Road (which you walked up from the station).
On the opposite side of the canal to the towpath, in those days, you wouldhave passed a tar distillery, a rubber reclaiming plant and a tannery, all before reaching the gas works. On the corner of Bridge Road and Linacre Road was a sausage factory. All added to the 'bouquet' of the area!
I well remember the "lift bridge" and was held up by it on numerous occasions while barges went through. My mother remembers the earlier swing bridge and a dairyman's cows being herded over it each day from a shippon on Linacre Road to graze in the fields 'over the bridge'. Times change!
I visited Bugsworth Basin recently with the walking group (in the rain). Very attractive and peaceful it is. It's a great credit to you and your colleagues.
Cheers,
Steve

In a second email, Steve sent me the following information about more photos to be found on the Internet and three photographs taken by his father, Mr J A Poulton, who kindly gave his permission to reproduce them here. The photos were taken after the Litherland bridge had closed to traffic, about 1974.

Litherland Lift Bridge, taken from Bridge Road (which you walked up from the station). Note the single red traffic light (no boring amber or green)! The gate on the left used to be the entrance to a blacksmith's yard. The v-shaped gap in the railings was the receiver for the barrier arm (like a car park barrier). Photo: Mr J A Poulton

Litherland Lift Bridge, taken from Church Road near its junction with Hawthorne Road. The bus is on the new flyover (Princess Way) which bypasses the earlier Lift Bridge route down Bridge Road to the docks. The Lift Bridge toll booth is mostly concealed by the tar works fencing but you can just make out its slated roof in front of the bridge. The cranes in the background, just to the right of the Red Lion pub, are at the Royal Seaforth container dock which had recently opened. It was the increasingly heavy traffic to and from the north end of the Liverpool docks which probably caused the demise of the Lift Bridge. Photo: Mr J A Poulton

Litherland Lift Bridge taken from the adjacent footbridge. This footbridge appears in an image dated 1900 and is probably older. You must have been standing on the steps of the footbridge when you took the first photo in the article about the walk in '174'. A bit of it appears in the top of the image. Photo: Mr J A Poulton

Our chairman’s letter in the last 174 has prompted Peter Stevenson to elaborate on his ideas to develop the waterways of the UK. I reproduce his letter in full.

Have I said all that Ian has stated, what have I been ‘hammering’ on about, where our long-underdeveloped waterways are concerned? I am sure I am saying something different! Please correct me if not!!

Stateably, I look for an entirely unified and standard Canal System that has dimensions of 65-70 feet wide in the channels and 10 feet deep; I also promote those new channels to be laid out on a single level at 220 feet above sea-level, whilst the existing canals are connectable to the upper level canal; this is an up-dated development of Mr Pownall’s Grand Contour Canal scheme of over 30 years ago. I knew him.

But what may be different is that at river crossings vessel lifts of the vertical kind, set-up in three stages and big enough to accept class four barges of 1350 tons, would connect with the new levels and would also serve as RAW WATER SUPPLIES to industrial and raw material trades located beside them - like the factories on the Rochdale Canal that I saw in 1970 when I first joined the IW Protection Society! Vessel-lifts could solve all the problems of locks on that waterway, for they do not have RESERVOIRS feeding them in obviously limited quantities.

And what about all the canal-feeder reservoirs of the Canal System of England, all 96 of them, that have not seen a dredger or a dragline scoop on them since they were built, from 1761 to 1800 or so - and where does the Royal Military Canal get its supply from?

Which all shows us what the REAL WORKING system of English waterways has actually been doing since they were originally built as we still see them; a hotchpotch of unco-ordinated channels given the same un-unified locks and channels from one canal to the other! For narrowboats of 200 years ago.

So what would the European Union do about them as regards even the minimum barge-standard of 400 tons, anybody? Who will tell us that, please?!

P.S. Second note: At 400 tons-a-time all barge operators can quote price-parity with both rail and road operators so that all of them can EQUALLY serve their own particular customers alongside each other. Is there any other way?

Well - Peter certainly has proposed a radical solution to modernising our waterways network - personally I’m not sure it wouldn’t be more land-hungry than a motorway or rail system - however some mighty impressive aqueducts and lifts could result from such a scheme. Have you any comments?

This model of the Upper Basin crane has been made by Colin Greenwood, one of the skilled craftsmen involved in the manufacture of the replacement crane post by the Rochdale Canal Workshops of Calderdale Council (formerly Callis Mill). Colin has built the model from measurements of the old post and its fittings and from a set of historical photographs and documents supplied by the IWPS. Colin is to be congratulated on producing such a fine and accurate representation of the crane.

“The indications are that 1998 will be a bumper year for the restoration with major schemes coming to fruition and even the whole Basin full, clear and on a stillage test. Targets, when volunteers are concerned are always difficult to set down or administer as we are all committed elsewhere for our livelihoods and professions as well as our own family commitments. There can be no penalties for targets not met and the only reward for targets met is more work and double the pay of nothing. However, with the greater participation of the Borough and County Councils within our scheme and the use of contractors for which finance has at last been found the volunteers are taking on a more administrative role to add to their 'care and maintenance' programme which is onerous in itself.

Whilst I and my colleagues still usually have a presence every Sunday on site we are more than ever spending long hours at our desks and computers dealing with planning what will be a major tourist attraction in one or two years time. This does mean lots of daytime meetings with Council Officers British Waterways, English Heritage, Contractors, Service providers and the like. To ensure continuity your Society representatives are usually two in number at these meetings with me as Site Manager and responsible to BW supported by a specialist colleague and Council Member with particular specialties like Archaeology, Engineering or liaison with other bodies covering nature matters for instance.

This year therefore targets are being set. if we do not meet them then it will not be for the want of trying and if we do meet them then the satisfaction gained will be all the more rewarding. This time in 1999 I will hopefully be writing a report on how we got on.”

Not much changes, does it? Later that year Bugsworth was open to boats but, sadly, it did not last. Leaks re-appeared and it took another 6 years to sort it!

Dorothy Bentley Smith, A Georgian Gent & Co. The Life and Times of Charles Roe. pp. 655, Landmark Publishing 2005, ISBN 1 84306 175 9, Ł25.

In the mid-eighteenth century Charles Roe (1715-81), an industrialist in a pre-industrial age, set the town of Macclesfield on the road to industrialisation by building its first silk spinning mill and one which used the principles of the Thomas Lombe machinery whose patents had expired in 1832. The mill was completed in 1748-49 and water power was obtained from a brook which was a tributary of the river Bollin. The site, between Mill Street and Park Green is marked today by a plaque. We are entering the realm of proto-industrialisation here for Roe's introduction of factory silk was built on the home manufacture of silk buttons, going back to the sixteenth century, and the throwing of silk in the houses of the work people and in throwing houses where a number of throwsters worked under supervision.

Having succeeded in establishing this enterprise Roe quite soon diversified into another which was also to prove an industry vital to the burgeoning industrial economy - copper mining and smelting. In 1756 he purchased Coniston mine, but having no smelter, sold the ore on probably to the nearest and most accessible smelter, in Warrington.

However this one source was insufficient for a viable copper production in Macclesfield and it appears that Roe began to extract copper ore from the Alderley Edge mines at the same time as the Coniston mines. This lasted about ten years 1758-68. Roe established a copper smelt works on Macclesfield where a windmill was erected about 1772 for crushing ore (There is still a Windmill Street near the site) The symbol for windmill is shown on Burdett's map of Cheshire 1771. About the same time a brass works was erected adjacent to the windmill. These works were on the common pasture and mark the first of many subsequent invasions of the commons by industry. Other copper works were established by Roe at Havannah and Bosley near Congleton, and at Liverpool. The Coniston production began to prove unproductive and in 1763 he took out a 21 year lease on the Parys Mountain copper mine on Anglesey, which became a very profitable concern. Roe also mined coal near Wrexham. He Also took an interest in canal communications and was involved in a scheme for a canal linking the Mersey with the Macclesfield Canal, but this never came to fruition.

Other than street names there is little to remind us today of the copper works in Macclesfield. However, collectors of industrial tokens (privately issued to counteract the shortage of copper coin at the end of the eighteenth century) will know of the many variations of the Macclesfield penny and half penny. One variety was inscribed 'Payable at Macclesfield, Liverpool and Congleton' and had a likeness of Charles Roe taken from his monument in Christ Church. Five detailed and informative pages are devoted by the author to tokens.

[Thirty years ago in France a Macclesfield resident on holiday came face to face with one of those metal plaques which adorn the sides of buildings. This one was advertising a product called 'Macclesfield'. It was copper sulphate for spraying on vines as a preventative of mildew. Is it still produced and has anyone seen such a sign? ]

In 1774 Charles Roe's brother, James, was vicar of St Michael's church and his acting curate was David Simpson. Simpson flirted with Methodism and as a result the bishop refused to institute him as curate. Charles Roe, along with his brother was evangelical and held Simpson in regard. He obtained an Act of Parliament for the erection of Christ Church, a church without a parish. It was built in seven months and completed in 1775-6. Roe's monument in the church is a tablet in relief and includes Genius holding a cog-wheel, a copper works and the original silk mill. Up to several years ago the monument was accompanied by a portrait of Charles Roe by Joseph Wright before it was realised that it was far too valuable to leave in an open church.

The author says she makes no apology for the amount of information in this book, and indeed it is difficult to imagine that any fact, facet, statistic, personality or date has been omitted. For instance there are nine pages on the Jacobite invasion of 1745. The result is a book consisting of 559 pages of dense main text which, if the author had focussed on her subject could probably have been reduced by at least 20 %. There is an epilogue (9 pages), some fine photographs (32) two appendices (18), notes and references (52) and an index (6), resulting in a huge book of 655 pages weighing in at 1.35 kgs (3lbs). There is unfortunately no separate bibliography although sources are listed in the notes, which take the form of being arranged by groups of pages. Thus, there is no superscript in the main text. One advantage of this is that when references are repeated in the notes they are given in full.

My chief criticism is the index, inadequate for a book of this scope and importance. Entries consist only of lists of page numbers and some are very long, e.g. 'Brass' 69 entries, 'coal' 63, 'London' 123, and similar lengthy lists for Cheshire, Derbyshire, Liverpool, Manchester, and of course for Charles Roe, and Roe and Co. Many entries do not merit an entry at all, eg ' Under 'Warrington' the entry is 'Thomas Legh…MP for Newton near Warrington', under 'Buxton' the entry is 'Flash…close by the route from Leek to Buxton'. The established convention is either to highlight in bold the most important entries, or to provide a breakdown of the entries by using sub-headings also in bold. Drawing up indexes is notoriously time consuming and tedious. I hope the author was not given the task, I suspect she was. Either way, it is the publisher (don't they employ sub-editors these days ?) who should take the blame; also for not pruning the text.

Charles Roe seems to have taken up a good part of the author's family life for at least ten years. Her dedicated research into the 'sheer volume of documentation which has passed before my eyes' includes not only Charles Roe and his family tree but often very useful and new background material - but, as I have said, at the expense of a loss of focus. Nothing about the historic and contemporary backgrounds, places, industries and their processes, and personalities seems to have escaped her attention. As a result, we have a huge source book for this most fascinating period.

It’s October so it must be time for the annual Inland Waterways Protection Society weekend away, this time two days on the Wey & Arun under the watchful eye of IWPS Chairman Ian Edgar.

After the obligatory car shuffle, a goodly crew of regulars and a handful of ‘newbies’ from the area met at the small car park at Tickners Heath at the northern edge of Sidney Wood (TQ027351), and were introduced to Geoff and Rosie Perks and Don Gibson, our hosts from the Wey & Arun Canal Trust. We quickly headed off westward through the trees to pick up a trackway that before too long emerged in a small clearing. To the right, behind a fence we could barely make out a canal-like ditch under the dense tree canopy, but to the left a more tangible channel headed off to the south, seemingly on a slight downhill gradient but we were assured this was a figment of our imagination. White marker posts about nine yards from the canal edge mark the extent of the Canal Trust’s lease on the land here – most of their activity seems to be keeping the scrub back so that the towpath is accessible.

The increasingly dry canal channel takes a couple of sweeping bends before the site of Lock 16 marks the end of the summit pound – its downhill to the Channel from here ! At Knighton’s Lane, what little canal we had for accompaniment is now infilled, passing through the properties of landowners unwilling, for the present, to be part of the restoration (TQ016339). We therefore bore left along the lane, passing Lock House on our right (Lock 15 was immediately behind), though rather hidden behind trees. This was the canal company’s main workshop and the lock-keeper had charge of all eleven locks in Sidney Wood. At a crossroads of forest tracks we were delighted to see a horse-drawn wagonette making its way towards us from the north (below) – the untarmacced ‘roads’ and traditional transport lending the air of the set of a Thomas Hardy novel. We did try to cadge a lift but in fairness to the driver there wasn’t room for another twenty !

A little further on (with Lock 13 somewhere in the dense forest to the south) the track ends at a T-junction with a minor road from Alfold. Immediately to the right is/was High Bridge – it certainly isn’t high anymore and the owners of the cottage adjacent to the canal seem keen to disguise the credentials of the dry ditch in their garden (TQ023336). The Canal Trust certainly have a job on their hands through here ! Below High Bridge however, things are a little rosier with little threat to the dry canal bed and a well-kept towpath. The property adjacent to the towpath with the long wooden paling fence is apparently owned by the model Jodie Kidd; they are not short of celebs on this canal with Ringo Starr alongside (geographically if not metaphorically) a few miles to the north, and former Status Quo drummer Jeff Rich further south.

The sites of the next few locks are hard to recognise, though marked by the presence of bunds and at one point the crossing of the Sussex Border Path, but at Southlands Lock 7, the quoins for the head-gates remain solid standing amid the verdant and slightly muddy debris beneath. Round the corner we were impressed with Devil’s Hole Lock and the first (I think) of Don Gibson’s Infoposts where leaflets are tucked into waterproof (and unvandalised) plastic boxes attached to stakes (below). The lock is named after the small ox-bow lake that was formed by the cutting of the canal across the line of the River Lox; rather than two aqueducts, they realigned the river to the west of the canal, leaving the ox-bow off the eastern bank.

The highlight however was the new Loxwood Lock (TQ039312) just before Loxwood High Street, which will enable the canal to be restored under the road without requiring the roadway to be lifted too much. The lock (below) was built almost entirely from voluntary labour and funded entirely from donations and grants secured by the Trust. The Trust’s Eric Walker was on hand to explain the construction and map out the next few months when work will get underway on getting under the B2133 [NB – the legal agreements were finally signed on 30th October.].

We stopped at the Onslow Arms for our lunch (decent beer and food, as ever here) and then continued south along what is now a rather lower pound than had been hitherto; Brewhurst Lock has been lowered by around 1.7m to get under the road, though the lower gates and surrounding infrastructure remain ‘as was’ to highlight what has gone on. It all looks a little incongruous with the tail-gates clearly higher than the head-gates (below). At the same time as the lock was lowered it was lengthened so that two Trust tripboats can use it at the same time. Brewhurst Mill lies immediately to the north.

Baldwin’s Knob Lock was the first to be restored on this section and still looks very good 15 years on, as does Barnsill Bridge which was restored a couple of years earlier by current Trust chairman Peter Foulger and his father, Gordon. We were very taken with the quality of hedge-laying along this section and were advised that this is all the work of a Trust volunteer, Keith Nichols, who had never done it until a few years ago. The impressive restoration at Drungewick Aqueduct and Drungewick Lane Bridge was covered in Issue 59, so on beyond the bridge towards Drungewick Lock. The permissive footpath here is ultimately a dead end but it is worth continuing to see the largely restored lock and the wide Long Meadow Winding Hole immediately below it (TQ065305; below). There is no immediate prospect of restoration beyond this substantial turning point, created in 1999, but hitherto unpromising soundings from the landowner appear to have softened of late, and the Trust are hopeful of a positive outcome. The River Lox, which has accompanied us for a few miles now, says goodbye as it enters the Arun, and we in turn retraced our steps to Drungewick Lane, where a few cars were parked up by the Roger Dimmick slipway, ready to whisk us back to Sidney Wood, after what had seemed more than the six miles suggested by the map !

The obligatory Saturday night supper was at the Three Compasses (TQ035359), about a mile north of where our walk had started at Tickners Heath. The pub is on the approach to the old Dunsfold Aerodrome, a hundred yards or so from where the canal passes under Dunsfold Bridge, and as ‘The Compasses’ was the venue for the official canal opening in 1816. Another excellent selection of beers (albeit I had a rather long drive back to the family home in East Grinstead) and the food belied the rather odd surroundings in the back ‘parlour room’ where we were ensconced. Particularly popular were the lamb chops, of which you could have 3, 4 or 5 (3 was quite enough for me and I am not a light eater !)

Another day, another pub. The Limeburners Arms not far from Newbridge near Billingshurst was the starting point for a shortish circular walk. The pub is no longer on the line of the canal, having been removed from its original location by the bridge after the canal had closed in 1868. It is situated on the Adversane road, running south of the A272 between Billingshurst and Wisborough Green (TQ073255). We walked a short distance south before taking the driveway towards Guildenhurst Manor before cutting left at a footpath sign and across fields, bearing uphill as we headed south-west with the spire of the church at Wisborough Green ever-present. Celeb-spotters may have the opportunity to tick another one off here; the land round here is owned by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour.

At what appeared to be a large shed we rounded the corner to be confronted with a bright yellow Boeing Stearman biplane in a makeshift hangar, undergoing the very final stages of a loving restoration. While the walk leaders fretted and tapped their watches, the rest of us spent quite a while gawping taking photos and chatting with the enthusiastic owner. Eventually we took our leave and dropped down the hill to a beautifully cared for tributary of the Arun where a neat little launch was moored under in its boathouse. (TQ067247; below). There is a delightful path along here as far as a footbridge, then up a hill towards Lee Place. The footpath runs close to the farmhouse then drops down the hill towards what passes for Harsfold Bridge (TQ051240) and the canal at last. Despite its out-of-the-way location, the Infopost here was the only one to be bereft of leaflets !

Walking north we soon happened upon hedge-layer Keith Nichols and two colleagues hard at work on another section of hedge (below). The towpath changes sides on a brick bridge at the site of Turf Lock where there is a pair of sturdy floodgates (below), and it is not too far beyond here, where the towpath is also the Sussex Diamond Way, and beyond the Rose Arch Footbridge over a stream, that the canal is severed by a realigned River Arun (TQ058245). The river used to pass under the canal at Lording’s Aqueduct but flood prevention required less of a ‘pinch’ and rather than rent the aqueduct asunder, the authorities moved the river. The towpath remains pretty much on its original course across a footbridge, from where the path climbs briefly up to Lording’s Lock. The tailgates of the lock mark the start of the canal again after its short disappearance. The aqueduct is immediately above the headgates and the main feature is the adjacent waterwheel, rebuilt by the late Winston Harwood from such original drawings as he could find, that brings water up from the river to the canal (below).

The canal is then infilled immediately above the aqueduct but the footpath marks the approximate course along the edge of a field, and towards the end of the field a distinct bump hints at where there may have been an accommodation bridge. The path then bears left slightly and becomes slightly scrubby as you enter a copse, but there is reward in the slight of a watered length of canal, albeit nothing to write home about. At the stile where the path leaves the copse and enters another field, a hand-painted sign suggests yet another local landowner who is not looking forward to boats returning anytime soon (below).

The path continues as far as the flattened Guildenhurst Bridge, with not a lot of canal either side or beneath it, and here we bore right, away from the canal, over the river on a footbridge, then uphill towards a stile. A footpath then leads back to the driveway to Guildenhurst Manor and the pub. Officially the end of the weekend’s excursions we said our thank yous to the Trust for hosting us, and then set about our pints of Gale’s ale and food with gusto.

Anxious not to miss out on some unseasonally good weather - and let’s face it, we’ve had some unseasonably bad stuff this year – four of us decided we would do a little add-on. We returned to Guildenhurst Bridge and headed north, passing the converted transhipment warehouse on the far bank at Newbridge Wharf before reaching the bridge at Newbridge itself, close to the site of the original Limeburners inn. Aficionados of the waterway will know that Newbridge is the point where the Arun Navigation (heading south towards Pallingham, and therefore what we had walked that morning) meets the Wey & Arun Junction Canal (north to Stonebridge) where we had been the day before). Together they are known as the Wey & Arun Canal but when you add in the Wey Navigation (north of Stonebridge) and the navigable River Arun (below Pallingham) it all gets very hard to follow ! the Arun itself is very close to the canal at Newbridge and approaching the bridge the towpath is sandwiched between the two.

You have to cross the A272 at Newbridge and cars tends to take the bends rather too fast so be careful. The canal is intact and in water (just) through to Northlands liftbridge (TQ068264; above). This was built by the Trust in 1979 and we had some debate as to whether the constituent parts had been brought down from an unwanted structure on the Walsall Canal – yet to be resolved, though Don’s Infopost leaflet suggests it was built from scratch. The path continues with some solid bushes and trees separating it from the water but at Rowner Lock (below) you are once again out in the open. Rowner was the first lock on the whole canal to be restored, the restoration taking place through the 70’s and the first boat passing through in 1982. Sadly the relative lack of progress, and the lack of water, has allowed the elements and the passage of time to do its worse and it is a rather sad affair at the moment; the electricity pylon that straddles the canal just upstream of the lock adds to the slight air of woe. There is bench here dedicated to Eileen Elizabeth Ebbutt – a name we recalled was also on a plaque on Brewhurst Bridge which we had visited 24 hours ago.

We were tempted to head across the fields to the Bat & Ball at Newpound Common but decided to knock off the few hundred yards up to Loves Bridge (right). This is effectively as far as you can follow the canal until the towpath at Drungewick Lock, where we ended Saturday’s perambulation, so it seemed a neat way to close. (There is a short section between Malham Lock and Bignor Bridge but it’s off the beaten track). Apart from being accompanied by a herd of cattle that clearly thought we were taking them off for milking, or tea, it’s a non-descript section which historically has been prone to leakage, but the bridge is rather nice, and I recalled passing under it during the Trust’s annual sponsored walk in 1999 (TQ068276). Originally restored in the mid-70’s the Trust had another go at it in 1992. From here a footpath heads up through a field then zig-zags delightfully though woods before making for Loves Farm and a tarmacced drive leads to the B21333. While my colleagues made for the pub to meet friends, I walked the 2 kilometres back down the road to the Limeburners.

Reference: Wey South path (W&A Enterprises) Free leaflets from Infoposts along the route

Maps: OS Landranger 186 (Aldershot & Guildford) and 197 (Chichester) plus a little bit of 187 (Dorking & Reigate).

Bugsworth Basin Report - Ian Edgar	Obituary - Gordon Johnson
Letters to the Editor	Conservation Area Review
Old Roads by Malcolm Bower	Information Request - Hugh Potter
Dukinfield Dry Dock by Peter J Whitehead	New Mills Hydro-Electric Plant
Barton Lock Hydro Project	Bugsworth Hydro?
The Carved Keystones of Marple Locks - Peter J. WHitehead.	Upper Basin Crane Model
10 years ago	On the Wey and Arun - Andy Screen
Book Review by Derek Brumhead	Loxwood Bridge

The Inland Waterways Protection Society Ltd

Campaigning Restoration Preservation Development

Newsletter "174" February 2008

Contents